Richard Croker 




RicuAKi) Choker. 



£y Courtesy of MeClure's ilagazuie. 
Copyright, iDvi, The S. S. McClure Company. 



Richard Croker 



Alfred Henry Lewis 

t/lutbor of 
"Wolfville," "Sandburrs" 




New York 



Life Publishing Company 



I 9 o I 




Copyright, 1901, 

by 

Life Pdblishino Company, 

New York City. 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London. 



Printed in the United States. 



All rights reserved. 



THE CONTENTS. 



An Author's Argument, 

I. An Ancestry, . 

II. Croker's Parentage, 

III. School Days— A Trade, 

IV. Athletics— Self-Defense, 
V. The Prize Fighter, 

VI. Some Small Change, 

VII. A Character Study, 

VIII. More Subsidiary Coin, 

IX. Some Church Thoughts, 

X, Ballot Duties, 

XI. One Hundred Years Ago, 

XII. Burr and Tammany, 

XIII. The Vengeance, 

XIV. John Kelly, 
XV. An Ex-President, 

XVI. Snobs, My Masters ! 

XVII. Hill and Gorman, . 

XVIII. Bryan and a Presidency, 

XIX. The Reformers, 

XX. The Trusts, 



xiu 
1 
12 
30 
43 
54 



97 
117 
134 
169 
181 
202 
224 
251 
272 
288 
310 
333 
348 



THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 



y 



Richard Croker, Frontispiece.'^ 

Richard Croker as a Youth, . . Facing page 26 -^' 

Tammany Hall, " 42 "^ 

Richard Croker's Office at Tammany Hall, 

John Kelly, 

The Tammany Hall Portrait of Richard 

Croker, 

Exterior of the Democratic Club, 
Main Hall of the Democratic Club, . 

John J. Scannell, 

Fireplace in Cafe of the Democratic Club, 
Statue of St. Tammany from the FAgADE 

OF Tammany Hall, . 
Arthur Pue Gorman, 
Meeting Room of the Executive CoM' 

MiTTEE of Tammany Hall, 
Grover Cleveland, 
David B. Hill, .... 
The Tammany Monument at Gettysburg, 



^ 



74 



106 
122 
154 
170 
186 

218 
250 



314 

346 



) 



DEDICATION. 

To the Hon. Oliver H. P. Belmont. 

Dear Sir: As a mark of my respect and friendship, 
sentiments which find root in those several years we 
were together in relations of close social and business 
kind, I dedicate this volume to you. And thereby I 
more especially desire to testify my admiration of those 
qualities of honesty, courage, generous energy, and a 
fair and democratic Americanism which move you 
to strive in the general interest rather than the nar- 
rower service of yourself. Often I have considered 
that the most desperate test to which man's nature 
can be subjected is the inheritance of great wealth. 
To begin poor, and amass riches and retain them, and 
be safe from life's commencement to its close, are 
common and, indeed, natural conditions. But to be 
born with great wealth — to be wealthy without effort 
and when young, blights more frequently than it ben- 
efits, and becomes the very reason of ruin oftener than 
anything else. One has but to call the roll of one's 
own acquaintance to be taught the perils that lie in 
ambush in a cradle full of gold. Beyond other effects 
such condition of earliest wealth is prone to sap one's 
energy and destroy one's hard capacity for toil. I 
do not now speak of him who picks up a system of 
gainful commerce when it falls from the dead hands 
of a forbear; who goes on with an existing enterprise 
which runs of its own momentum; and who offers the 
spectacle rather of being conducted by a business than 
of conducting one. There are herds of these, of any 



Xli DEDICATION. 

one of whom it might be said that a fortune inherited 
him and not he a fortune. No; I mean an energy that 
is original and a toil that plows new fields. And it 
is the assertion within you of this virile energy, and a 
work-willingness, and that despite the handicap of 
riches yours from the first, that challenges my ap- 
plause. Work when one feels the spur of need in 
one's flank or shoulder is a leap we all will take. But 
to toil when no selfish occasion compels, and when the 
coaxing idleness of some pleasant pleasure allures, is 
a thought too hardy for most of us who must be 
driven to every field of effort and held there under 
guard. So rare are folk of this sort that, aside from 
yourself, of those scores of Eich-when-born whom 
I've encountered, I noted but three who, with tempers 
fine enough to resist those moral delinquencies that are 
the seeds of a sweet destruction, had also the honesty, 
courage, and energy of initiative in combination 
which will attempt new paths, and strive in a great 
enterprise for a reason not self. These were Messrs. 
Hearst of the Journal, Eoosevelt of the Viee-Presi- 
dency, and Cable, one time Congressman from the 
Rock Island District, Illinois. You, or any of these, 
are, to my mind, among the best examples of man, 
and a far nobler headland for our youth to steer by 
than is he who, adding to a healthful and coercive 
poverty some genius for voracity and to make a prey, 
has conquered to himself a mountain of money to no 
one's good but his own. It is for these qualities I 
touch my hat to you; and hoping for your future that 
success which I do not doubt it will have, I remain, 
Sincerely your friend, 

Alfred Henry Lewis. 



AN AUTHOE'S ARGUMENT. 

First among the arts is the art of existence. And 
one may make of one's life a picture whereof the 
framing shall be one's birth and death. The picture 
in its making will be much within one's own haBids. 
It may show bright or dark, sunshine or storm, 
tragedy or comedy; and it will entertain, or teach a 
lesson, or be a warning. And in this life-picture, for 
either its beauty or interest, that trade or purpose to 
which one betakes one's self, wherewith to live or to 
kill one's time, is not of so much moment as those 
who only casually regard the subject might appre- 
hend. All that is requisite in order that one's life 
may go " on the line " as of the best pictures is to be 
best and first of one's degree. 

There is a good story in the life of every man. But 
the best stories will be the stories of those selected as 
the best lawyer and farmer and preacher and pirate 
and soldier and doctor and writer and politician and 
mechanic and fop and wit and what else one will. 
Whatever one's class, and whether the world call it 
humble or high, if one be but particular to stand at its 
head, one's story will be worth the telling, and hailed 
as of first and purest merit as a tale. 

Of course, according to a taste, one onlooker will 
affect this picture and another that; one will peruse 
the dominie while another burns oil to read the bucca- 
neer. Some, even, will prefer the fop. Byron was of 

xiii 



XIV AN A UTHOR 'S ARG XJMENT. 

these, and solemnly protested that he would rather be 
George Brummel than Napoleon. And, truly! where 
is the better picture, or the better story, than a fop 
who is perfect in consistency and complete in each 
respect? 

There was Scrope Davies, for example, whom Byron 
loved as well as he did Brummel and to whom he dedi- 
cated his " Parisina." Scrope was a neat and for- 
midable contestant against Brummel for the crown of 
the Kingdom of Dandy; and, holding his own in all 
else — for Scrope was wit and scholar as well as beau — 
was only at last defeated by the desperate perfection of 
his rival's cravats. 

Byron speaks of Scrope, and amuses one with his 
brief sketch of an evening — " At the Cocoa with 
Scrope Davies. Sat from six - till midnight. Drank 
between us one bottle of champagne and six of claret. 
Offered to take Scrope home in my carriage; but he 
was tipsy and pious, and I was obliged to leave him on 
his knees praying to I know not what purpose or 
pagod." 

Scrope was quite as difficult a picture, and just as 
perfect, as was Csesar at the head of his Eomans. The 
story of Scrope would be as interesting as that of 
Caesar, and worth as much to men. 

Become of the best of one's sort, and one will be 
entitled to go on the shelf as of the best books, or on 
the wall as of the best pictures, and hold one's own 
with competition. 

Eichard Croker is a politician and peerless of his 
kind. Which is why this book is written. Hate may 
deny and Envy frame a sneer and l^cfeat appeal the 
gods in contradiction; yet Eichard Croker, the most 



AN AUTHOR'S ARGUMENT. xv 

potential figure of the greatest city of the greatest 
State of the greatest country of the world, can be no 
too-little subject for any page or pen. 
New York City, 
May 10th, 1901. 



RICHARD CROKER 



AN ANCESTRY. 

Mai: My Lord Aumerle, is Harry Hereford armed ? 
Aum. Yea, at all points, and longs to enter in. 

— King Richard II. 

This work is to have concern with Richard Croker. 
And while, hy all known rules of book-building, what 
immediately follows should be named for its most 
part, " Preface," it is deemed well to make of it a 
chapter. There is a wisdom in this. A preface, 
commonly, is nothing set forth in from two hundred 
to ten thousand words, dependent for length on the 
writer's genius for preface. It is barren of idea, 
bankrupt of fact — a desert of inky desolation. This 
preface-waste of types, thrown between the reader and 
the book, does harm. It sucks up not infrequently 
those streams of popular interest which might other- 
wise have reached the book. No, of a verity! a 
preface is a disaster to reader and to writer both. It 
is a scarecrow to frighten timid fowl from that corn 
of fact or fancy lying just beyond. Therefore, let us 
have no prefaces. Let us in pleasant stead have chap- 
ters, as matters much more likely to win the eye of 
general interest. There was never the man save one 



2 mCHARD CROKER. 

who might with safety hail himself master of preface 
-that was Walter Scott. He threw out and managed 
these skirmish lines of literature with a skill as rare 
as brilliant. With Scott the preface was often better 
than the book. 

This volume, then, is to deal with Eichard Croker, 
and in measure tell his story. Still, one is not to call it 
a biography. I, who write, have neither the bent nor 
yet sitch load of detail needed for one of those painful, 
hair-line etchings known to book-commerce as biogra- 
phies. Again, your biography, worth the term, should 
have deference to a day at least a quarter of a century 
after its subject is successfully dead— until he who 
is to be biographed is locked in that sure stronghold 
of the grave. This work, as against all other titles, 
might best be styled a sketch. And while there is 
nothing in a name there is much in an example, and it 
would be well if, of writers past and present, we might 
pick on one to guide by. Macaulay did this sort of 
thing for a stout list of gentlemen, all good and dead 
to-day. Macaulay named them "Essays." But one 
may not go too close in imitation of Macaulay. Our 
perfervid Scot was much warped of partisanship. 
Macaulay was thrilling, but untrue. Carlyle, another 
Scotchman with a French pen, left cords of similar 
contribution, doubly amazing for vigorous phrasing 
and ana?mic veracity. Hazlett was another who, in 
his " Spirit of the Age," followed this trail to market, 
and sold a deal of good wormwood to make a bad, 
poor living withal. Of the world's sketch-writers, 
Plutarch succeeded the highest. Our Roman, like 
Izaak Walton, who, three centuries ago, was a later 
Plutarch in a little way to Wotten, Donne, and others. 



TRUTH IS SOUGHT. 3 

baptized his efforts " Lives." But we forage too far 
and to no good end among these dust-heaps of dead 
time. None of them is a model. Let us get back to 
our task and depend on ourselves. 

In dressing the stone, and mixing the mortar, and 
laying the walls of this story, there shall be but one 
purpose: The sole, lone target aimed at shall be truth. 
It may be well to wear this statement in one's mind. 
A procession of mendacity, in a very lock-step of lies, 
will follow Richard Croker to the end. It will be 
marshaled by partisanship, recruited by jealousy, and 
led by his foes. It is worth while, therefore, since 
none cuts coupons from any bond of error, to create 
a place in print where the truth of Richard Croker 
can be had. This is to be no attack, no defense; it is 
neither to blame nor to praise. " Sir Oliver," quoth 
Sir Peter Teazle, " we live in a damned wicked world, 
and the fewer we praise the better." The ill-used 
baronet's wisdom in this last fulsome behalf shall be 
to us a chart. No, there's to be neither love, nor 
hate, nor praise, nor censure, nor bouquets, nor brick- 
bats, nor interest personal or political, from one cover 
to the other. Truth shall be the watchword, first as 
last. 'Tis a commodity grand, popular, and scarce — 
that Truth. There's little of it told; there's little of 
it sold. For which reasons. Truth, where and for 
what cause it comes to market, should carry that in- 
terest and selling quality commonly stated of hot 
cakes. 

It is a fashion when one writes of folk of eminence, 
advertisement, and power, to plant some space with 
their pedigrees. Whether the subject be some kinlesa 
loon, or one rich in ancestry, is ever of deep im- 



4 niCHARD CROKER. 

portance; especially in America, emphatically in New 
York. There are — by averment of the sole agents of 
these shores— more "Burke's Peerages" sold each 
year in New York City than in London and all 
England. There are more carriages to be seen in any 
New York City day bedight with the coat-armor of 
the free and democratic American inside, than would 
roll by one in London in a week. And wherefore 
not? The veriest pessimist of lineage and heraldry 
would fain concede you full two thousand families of 
this city, whose rights rest on the Four Hundred, and 
who trace themselves to forefathers who " came over 
with the Conqueror." True, not a few of these, our 
American nobility, have no knowledge of the " Con- 
queror " ; whether of his name, his person, or that 
day of which he lived. They know not what he " con- 
quered," nor what he " came over " ; they ken neither 
his start nor his stop— where he was nor where he 
went. Nor why. Admit it all: what then? Our hope- 
ful patricians are still clear as to the coat of arms, 
and that forbear who " came with the Conqueror." 

One is not to suppose, however, for that it is com- 
mon as a genealogical feat in New York City, Richard 
Croker in his ancestry is here to be back-tracked to 
the Norman. One is sure of the Croker line no 
further away than Cromwell. Still, this is well; for 
Cromwell himself in his day was quite a comfortable 
form of conqueror; and it is better than an even 
chance, had he been at Hastings that far hour instead 
of Harold, bold William with his ambitions would 
have gone limping back to France. 

Richard Croker was born in 1843. He saw his first 
sun in Ireland, not over far from Cork and in the 



CASTLETO WNROCHE. 



farm regions about the hamlet of Castletownroche. 
His father was Eyra Coote Croker. In their original 
the Crokers were English, and came into Ireland with 
Cromwell as officers in his army of invasion. These 
CromAvell Crokers had celebration in their time for 
much soldierly stubbornness of heart and arm. They 
would face anything, fight anything, whether in pub- 
lic or in private war; and stood touchily upon their 
honor. There were Crokers in the army, in literature, 
in law, in parliament. They were of the gentry; but 
lacking thrift and prudence, and with an overpower- 
ing bent to wager their substance on dice, cards, and 
horses, no Croker of the olden time was very rich for 
very long. For two centuries and a half after Crom- 
well, those Crokers who remained in Ireland and their 
descendants, when not in the law or the army, were 
" gentlemen farmers." But Avhatever they were, they 
raced and rode and hunted and wagered and fought. 
Withal, they were strong in an inherited Presby- 
terianism; than which last-named virtue, "there is 
nothing," says some sage of arms, " so good to stiffen 
a line of battle." 

Speaking of duels, it is said by some that it was a 
Croker who challenged that Castlereagh who was Lord 
Lieutenant of Ireland in the earliest years of last cen- 
tury. The firebrand Croker aforesaid had been in- 
sulted by a beggarly gauger; and not caring to fight 
so low a fellow, and reflecting that Castlereagh as the 
highest civic authority must own the gauger for his 
minion, he sent a cartel to that nobleman as to one 
who by his agent had worked the offense. Castlereagh 
was discouraged. He opposed the construction of such 
a precedent. If he, as Lord Lieutenant, was to be 



6 BICBABD CHOKER. 

paraded at ten paces for the misdeeds of every ignoble 
ganger on his lists, his days would be filled with pow- 
der smoke, and his trusty " saw-handles " kept bark- 
ing from morning till dark. 

Castlereagh submitted these views to the hostile 
Croker. They, in no sort, appealed to the latter. He 
insisted that Castlereagh answer for his derelict 
gauger in the Phoenix. The question was referred to 
an Irish Court of Honor composed of gentlemen as 
ardent as the Crokers. The Court of Honor went 
heavily into the controversy. It heard Croker. It 
listened to Castlereagh and weighed the latter's de- 
fense. Then it gave decision: 

"Castlereagh was right," said the Court, "in re- 
fusing to be held for the mal-deeds of the gauger. 
There were no such relations of confidence and near- 
ness," argued the Court, " between a Lord Lieutenant 
and a gauger, which forced the first to the field to be 
shot at for the transgressions of the other. Castle- 
reagh was to be upheld in his pose. But," continued 
the Court, with a fineness of perception born of its 
native greed for trouble, " there was another side to 
the case in hand. Castlereagh was not alone Lord 
Lieutenant; he was also a soldier. And a soldier, 
pugnacious by profession, was bound to accept all 
challenges without reference to the cause, and be 
ready to go to the field with any gentleman who had 
a mind for blood. It was the Court's unanimous voice 
that, on this argument, Castlereagh should fight." 

Castlereagh, however, declined the decision and re- 
fused to be controlled. Croker was in despair, and 
the Court of Honor scandalized. They regarded the 
Lord Lieutenant as no better than a fool in his folly 



THE WELLSTEADS. 7 

for failure to have advantage of a quarrel offered with 
such integrity, and upheld with such skill. Lever, I 
believe, makes some use of this story in one of his 
tales of Ireland and the Irish. But Lever claps the 
narrative on the shoulder of one of his people of 
fiction, and not at all on that Croker to whom it prop- 
erly belongs. 

Richard Croker, on his mother's side, deduces his 
descent from Scotland. His mother's family, even 
before the Crokers came in with Cromwell, left their 
sterile, half-fed Scottish glens and pushed into 
Ireland, where, with a more lenient climate, and a 
gentler, richer soil, a man might take more for his 
tillage. Their family name was Wellstead. 

Being equally of the gentry with the Crokers, the 
Wellsteads were on social par with them. With more 
mood to plow a field than train a dog or mount a 
horse and hunt a fox, and with nothing of that taste 
for quart-pots, wars, and wagers which so shone in the 
case of the Crokers, the Wellsteads far outtopped 
the others in point of fortune. The Wellsteads did 
not have so good a time as the Crokers; but they had 
more money. While there is no instance of angry 
collision between the two families, it is not understood 
in the traditions of Castletownroche that the Crokers 
or the Wellsteads found in the others much of deep 
delight. 

" Ten years ago " — said Mr. John Scannell, a 
gentleman who has known Eichard Croker since his 
boyhood, and of whom there will be more or less to 
say throughout these pages — " ten years agt) I made a 
tour of Ireland. I called on Croker's uncle. His 
name was Richard Wellstead. The old gentleman was 



8 RICHARIJ CHOKER. 

the favorite brother of Richard Croker's mother. She 
named her son for this brother. This Wellstead was 
a ' gentleman farmer ' of the type one reads about. 
He was hale and firm of mind and fiber. His farm 
had about one thousand acres. His business, and as 
well his joy, was to raise blooded cattle and swine, 
and show them in all the great fairs throughout the 
four kingdoms. He had a good library and a great 
wine cellar, and when not about his cattle, divided 
time between his bottle and his books. Well-educated 
and much-traveled, the old gentleman made the two 
or three hours I put in with him not the worst I sav/ 
abroad. I asked him about the Crokers: he shook his 
head; he didn't like them. 

" ' I never liked the Crokers,' he said; ' the men of 
the family, while gentlemen, were sad roysterers. 
They had no turn for business and despised it. They 
couldn't keep money. They had but one ambition — 
the army. They held your swashbuckler officer, drink- 
ing and dicing away his patrimony, making vain 
wagers on the issues of a horse race, and all to the 
ruin of his fortune, m greater esteem than some 
honest farmer who, reaping his fields in peace, could 
win his pounds and count his pounds and keep his 
pounds with any of the land. No, no; it was a case of 
fire and water; at no time in two centuries have the 
Crokers and the Wellsteads overwell agreed. I did 
what man might to keep my sister from marrying one. 
But girls are hard to guide; she had her way.' 

" The old gentleman," continued Scannell, " took 
a deep drink after this. Being refreshed, he went 
over an interminable list of Crokers who squan- 
dered their fortunes before middle age, and then 



LOCKHART— CAMPBELL. 9 

passed a want-bitten existence to the end of their days 
on the narrow pay of a captain. He seemed a bit 
mollified in the instance of Eyra Coote Croker, who 
married his sister and became the father of Eichard 
Croker. He spoke better of him than of the others, 
saying that he was the best of the lot; albeit he, too, 
had been guilty of that family crime of the Crokers, 
and lost his money before ever he saw thirty years." 

It will strike the calmer mind that in this matter 
of family we have done enough. Walton with his 
" Lives " will in five pages have you his pet Donne — 
family tree and all — to his twentieth year. Campbell, 
in his " Lives of the Lord Chancellors," deals out the 
genealogy of his wigged, grave heroes with but a 
scurvy scantiness. Even in the instance of the 
bloody Jeffries, about all that Campbell tells one is 
that Jeffries' father was a Welshman who took early 
occasion to prophesy a headless ending for his son 
with block and ax on Tower Hill; and then, as one 
who washes his hands of a bad matter, never spoke 
to his son again. Lockhart, in his " Life of Scott," 
an indomitable work which extends itself in ten 
volumes, disposes of the " pedigree " and the 
"parentage" of his noble hero in twenty-five 
pages. And as Sir Walter was father of Lockhart's 
wife, the author was bound to warm to his subject, 
and hold for it a filial love by sheer artifice of law. 
And yet " pedigree " and " parentage " in twenty-five 
brief pages! 

One is not, however, to blame Walton, nor Camp- 
bell, nor Lockhart, nor those others of our biographers 
who expend not themselves generously in affairs of 
pedigree. It's not so much neglect as caution. And 



10 RICHARD CROKER. 

to you who read, and who, at this time, for aught one 
knows, may be sowing the seeds of the pedigree habit 
within your own breast, a word of warning should be 
flung. Beware! The appetite for ancestry lately de- 
veloped in America is as pernicious as the poppy. 
Have a care as you climb the family tree, lest your 
sensibilities should heir a fall. One must not crowd 
one's ancestry to the wall, nor harass it with too strict 
a search, lest it turn and rend one. It has been the 
fault of every age that more folk were hanged than 
crowned. By that token! one should go warily about 
the heretofore. There lives none but who is bound, 
by the very argument of opportunity, and as one 
thousand is to one, to face the risk of an ancestry, 
which, with the last word, will climb a gallows rather 
than a throne. And doubtless this wisdom was in the 
thoughts of our historians of men when they disposed 
of the " family " in each coil with so much of a sharp 
suddenness. Those of us will be cunning who heed 
their examples. Let us, therefore, end this our search 
into the annals of past Crokers with a story of Richard 
Croker's great-grandsire. It may serve as a partial 
picture of the hardy home-love of the breed. 

Our old gentleman lay dying; the preacher sat by his 
bedside comforting his departure with the loveliness of 
Paradise. 

" Is heaven so beautiful, then? " asked the dying 
Croker. 

" Aye! is it," quoth the dominie. 

" Have you seen the Eiver Blackwater that sweeps 
by us that handful of miles to our south? " 

"Aye! have I," quoth the dominie; "I mind the 
Blackwater well." 



BLACKWATEB BANKS. 11 

" And do you know the land and the scenes of it 
that lie between Blackwater and Castletownroehe? " 

" Those scenes are dear and fragrant to my mem- 
ory," quoth the dominie. " None knows them better." 

" And is heaven so beautiful? " 

"x\ye! is it," quoth the dominie, folding his. hands. 
" Blackwater banks, and the scenes about Castletown- 
roehe, are by comparison as a fiend-infested desolation 
— a sand-blown, awful waste." 

" It's a lie! " whispering the dying old man, while 
wrath lit its torch in each eye. "It's a lie! Out of 
my house! None so false shall find shelter within 
four walls of mine! " 

Having thus thrown out the dominie, the old man, 
with the gripe of death upon him, turned to the wall 
and passed without further speech. But he died 
sturdily as he'd lived, maintaining that in no most 
favored nook of the universe could a picture so fair 
be found, as that which spread from his door — the 
fields between Blackwater and Castletownroehe. 



11. 



CROKER S PARENTAGE. 

Farewell to the laud where the clouds love to rest, 

Like the shroud of the dead on the mountain's cold breast ; 

To the cataract's roar where the eagles reply, 

Aud the lake her lone bosom expands to the sky. 

— Walter Scott. 

It was in 1846, then, that Eyra Coote Croker and his 
household spread sail for America. With him as his 
most valued possession came young Eichard Croker, 
at the untried age of three. One didn't " step across " 
in those days, and the Crokers were two weeks in their 
coming. History is noiseless on the subject of that 
voyaging, and whatever of watery adventure was en- 
countered is lost and not preserved. It is to be 
assumed that the Crokers met fair weather and foul, 
head tvinds and flattering gales, sunshine, and again 
those lowering clouds burned with leven flashes and 
split by the storm's hoarse voice, together with what- 
ever of further phenomena are common to eyes which 
go down to the sea in ships. 

It does not appear that at this hour Eyra Coote 
Croker was decided to make New York his abiding 
place. Evidently he had been taught that the Eldorado 
he came seeking lay westward and beyond. This 
seems plain; for after landing, no sooner was his family 
sheltered in safe comfort than the head of the house 
explored as far as Cincinnati in search of some place 



THE CROKER FORTUNES. 13 

that might cope with his hopes of a home. It was not 
to be. In that day, as in this, there was nothing to the 
West that quite repaid one for New York; and, follow- 
ing a few weeks of going about, Eyra Coote Croker, like 
many another of parallel experience, came back to New 
York to remain. The West held no offer which New 
York didn't double; and thus it was that Eyra Coote 
Croker made conclusion to live where he came ashore, 
and with that set up his lares and penates, and was at 
rest. 

We will not continue in exhaustive recital the com- 
ings in and goings out of the parents of Eichard Croker. 
They were folk of repute, law-abiding and industrious; 
and while they lived in circumstances of slender for- 
tune — for Eyra Coote Croker, like all Crokers past and 
present of whom one hears a lisp, was born with both 
hands open, and had such hold of money as a riddle has 
of water — they were of good moment and respect in 
their neighborhood and day. Eichard Croker's 
mother, the once Miss Wellstead, was peculiarly a lady 
of refinement and culture. In every role of life she 
was a star to steer by, while her deep sentiment of re- 
ligion shone in her life like a grace. 

Eyra Coote Croker, who had worn sword and epau- 
let as an officer of the Queen, threw away his commis- 
sion when his money was gone, and brought to this 
country no method of bread-winning save a profound 
knowledge of veterinary, an art to which all Crokers 
are congenitally bent. What in Ireland had been the 
leisure of an amateur became here the profession by 
which he lived, and for many years following his ad- 
vent in America Eyra Coote Croker practiced the mys- 
tery of horse-surgery with much resultant comfort of 



14 RICHARD CROKER. 

money. When our civil battle broke in the war-wrung 
sixties, the old fighting spirit of those Crokers who 
rode at the back of Cromwell was roused, and Eyra 
Coote Croker struck in for the Flag and the Union. 
He came to no military eminence — for there is a poli- 
tics in war as well as peace, and Eyra Coote Croker, a 
Democrat then as is his son to-day, had not that 
" interest " at Washington without which commissions 
walk slow as doom to meet one — and his quality as a 
soldier is now recalled only by some old, belated com- 
rade, or those others who hold unfashionably with the 
song that, " The boys who do the fighting are the pri- 
vates of the army." 

It is probable that the child-years of young Eichard 
Croker would scarce repay a ransack in quest of the 
unusual. Childhood in most of its experience and ex- 
pression is ever the same. It is a period of savagery, 
with only a half-threat of that eclipse which culture, 
arriving with years, will confer upon it. Childhood, 
whether it be white, or red, or black, or wheat-hued, as 
in China, is marked by a squalling impatience of re- 
straint, and to mothers with moods for cleanliness, a 
maddening anxiety to embrace the earth: there to roll, 
and welter, and wallow, and collect a spirit, and lay up 
funds of health. Young Eichard, one may be sure, 
attended to these important matters, and worked along 
to days when one loses one's first teeth, and acquires 
one's first roundabout, by trails which have been trav- 
eled by every healthy, young male child of the race 
since Adam flung Eden away in a passion of experi- 
ment. 

Young Eichard Croker's earliest schooldays were 
passed in an edifice which stood at the corner of Madi- 



HIS FIRST SCHOOL. 15 

eon Avenue and Twenty-sixth Street, on ground now- 
covered by Madison Square Garden. At that time his 
home was on Twenty-eighth Street near Fourth 
Avenue. 

It has been the frequent effort of those who, by virtue 
— or vice — of an opposition in politics, were from time 
to time critics of Richard Croker, to intimate rather 
than set forth that he found his babyhood, and as well 
his boyhood, in an atmosphere of evil. They would 
have one believe that he had his upbringing in the 
" slums." They do not define " slums " in this con- 
nection, but concede the term to be a synonym for all 
cesspools of general sin; and, proceeding on the assump- 
tion that naught good may come from Nazareth, they 
attain by graceful swoops to the conclusion that every- 
one, crop and output of the " slums," must perforce be 
vile. Without pausing to contend with these notable 
moralists who provide this theory, one will go straight 
to the fact that in the fifties the region indicated as 
young Richard's home-spot was one most reputable and 
quiet of the town, with the same claim to be distin- 
guished as a " slum " as have the present corners of 
Fifty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue. Young Rich- 
ard's home was a scene of quiet and peace, the hall 
of order and religion, as must be homes where such 
spirits as his mother prevail as chief influences. And 
the neighborhood to surround it had similar decorous 
atmosphere. 

It has been said that young Richard Croker's first 
school was at Twenty-sixth Street and Madison Avenue. 
This seminary was of the quasi-primitive character of 
fifty years ago. There was but one teacher, the 
scholars sat on benches, and a box of clean white sand. 



16 RICHARD CROKER. 

wherein the letters of the alphabet might be traced 
with the finger of the young idea a-learning, had the 
place of blackboard. Young Eichard continued to 
take his young draughts at this well-spring of learning 
for divers years; indeed until he'd attained the age of 
twelve. He was not in this day famed for that book- 
hunger which devours knowledge by chapters. Young 
Richard didn't like books; he felt the lot of the stu- 
dent burdensome. He was a true Croker, and his 
thoughts ran to horses and dogs, and his heart was full 
of a love of athletics. School was hateful; lessons 
were exercises of pain. Young Richard found his joy 
in small explorations and those adventures by flood 
and field which Upper Manhattan and the East River 
afforded. Bearing in thought the above, it goes the 
more to the credit of young Richard, when, conquer- 
ing that spirit of outdoors which possesses him, he 
sticks stubbornly to his bench and his book until his 
lesson is in hand and the approval of the pedagogue 
obtained. 

Whether or no one is to believe with Campbell that 
" coming events cast their shadows before " will hang 
partly by one's ability for the reasonable, and partly by 
that hard-pan of superstition whereon the foundations 
of one's nature are laid. The subject surely will gain 
no illumination here. Apropos of this, however, many 
who in boyhood were schoolmates of young Richard, 
and who have since borne witness to him as that " un- 
checked autocrat," to borrow an enemy's description, 
who, with a firm wisdom and a wise mildness, has di- 
rected the government of hardby four millions of folk, 
declare that his boyhood gave abundant hint of that 
talent of domination which in later years has so filled 



THE PHARISEE. IV 

his hand with affairs. I confess myself victim to a con- 
siderable distrust of this. It is an easy and a popular 
exercise for many, sometimes led by fondness and again 
by hate, to roam away to the youth of folk confessedly 
powerful, and read in their baby-pages the story of tre- 
mendous deeds to come. It was so \vith Caesar, with 
Cromwell, with Churchill, with Napoleon, with Wel- 
lington, ^7ith Washington, with Franklin, with Lincoln, 
with Grant. And it's as natural in the case of Croker. 

Be sure I am well aware of the risk to be run while 
coupling the name of Croker with that procession of 
monumented leaders which precedes it. Only the dead 
are great. No arm is mighty until touched of that 
palsy of the bier; no tongue speaks wisdom until 
dumbed with the gag of the grave. And in Croker's 
instance there is a political opposition to find fault. 
There be those who, for a disappointment of place or 
a fear of defeat hereafter — they whose partisanship is 
their intelligence, and who feel with their spleen — will 
writhe in sneers at such hooking-up. Napoleon and 
Croker! Grant and Croker! they will almost die at it! 
And there is the tribe of the Pharisee, a prevailing sept 
in these streets, who thank Heaven they are not as 
other men; who, clothed of a white shirt and a snivel, 
pretend to patronize the race; whose notion of respect- 
ability is a notion of riches, and who, with that 
thought in their souls, would rather be respectable 
than right; whose belief goes to it that the best dressed 
citizen is the best citizen — these will scoff mightily at 
this. Caesar and Croker! Wellington and Croker! it 
will eat into their ears as blasphemy! 

This is a time of snobs in a town of snobs, and the 
pole-star of snobs is fashion. Democracy is unfashion- 



18 RICHARD CROKER. 

able, Tammany Hall is unfashionable, Croker is un- 
fashionable with these bandarlog — thank Providence 
and Kipling for the word! — rehearsed above. It may 
move to one's composure to remember that here in this 
very town Washington and Franklin, and later Jeffer- 
son, Burr, and Jackson, and in our own day Lincoln 
and Grant, were similarly chattered and mouthed 
against by these folk and their forbears. Such critics 
should be silent for a word. Their own clamorous and 
resentful tale of Eichard Croker should put them 
down. By their story he dominates the town — their 
town — like a Colossus, and has for years; he holds it 
helpless in his hand; drives it north, or south, or east, 
or west, like cattle at his will. He may bury it with 
taxes or batter it to pieces with its own ordinances; in 
short — such is their stor}' — he controls them and mil- 
lions more in all they hold publicly dear, and of mo- 
ment and civil, good value. By this, their relation 
and that of their tin-pan press, Croker, among nearly 
four millions of people defended by their ballots and 
with Albany in the hands of his enemies, has conquered 
to himself a coign of absolute autocracy. And all with- 
out pedigree or pocketbook, or any kindred influence 
so potent in this town's abjection, wherewith to make 
his way. Rome in the time of Caesar was a hamlet to 
New York; Paris in Napoleon's day a village. By their 
very slanders his foes force Croker's name upon the 
roster of the world's conquerors, and make him great 
before his friends have moved. 

Nor do they solve defeat by epithet; they but despite 
themselves. To say that Croker is corrupt, or dis- 
honest, or ignorant, or of inferior and little girth in 
mentality or morals, is to call him weak five times. 



kSlED ON STATESMEN Id 

None of these is an element of strength; one and all 
they make for downfall, not success. And as a pro- 
posal it seems clear that, once one concedes one's own 
conquest, whatever of a vile weakness one may charge 
upon one's conqueror, one but makes one's self both 
viler, weaker still. Croker's foes picture him a fashion 
of mal-Jupiter, who, if he would, could blast all good 
city things by the mere lightnings of misrule. If this 
be sooth, then failing fame for what he is, he should 
be given it for that which he is not; if he's not to have a 
niche for what he has done, he should at least gain one 
for what he doesn't do. But what accounteth argu- 
ment! As was said above, the great are ever dead; and 
in the fact of a tomb there often hides the fact of a 
re-baptism. " AVhat is a statesman, Mr. Speaker? " 
asked Thomas Brackett Reed on a House occasion when 
he had been much quoted to, not to say belabored, in 
debate with the utterances of " statesmen " not one of 
whom then breathed. " If we are to be controlled by 
what ' statesmen ' have said, then let me ask again, 
Mr. Speaker, what is a statesman? I'll tell you what 
a statesman is. A statesman is a dead politician." 

But we must pause. Where were we when this 
squall struck to drive us so far to leeward of a course? 
We were, I recall, in the midst of certain distrusts con- 
cerning stories told of Croker's boyhood deeds which 
foreshadowed his present generalship of men. And 
these distrusts are just. Never does one note an adult 
Hercules going about, clothed of power, club, and lion- 
skin, but one encounters a crowd of courtiers tagging 
at his hocks, ready with romance of how in his cradle- 
days he choked some python sent by some hate-moved 
Juno to coilfully compass his destruction. Thus it is 



20 RICHARD CROKER. 

well and cautious to lay aside without retelling not a 
few traditions touching Croker's youth which have been 
offered. His boyhood, as well as one may know, was 
usual and commonplace. If attributes there were em- 
phatic in him, they were traits of a quiet, steady, pams- 
taking intelligence; honesty, a soul for justice, and a 
courage that never swerved. 

Coupled with these was a physical strength uncom- 
mon to the point of the phenomenal. Young Richard 
as a boy was what is termed " small of his age." Even 
at full growth he weighed but one hundred and 
forty pounds. Now, as he nears sixty years, grown 
broader, thicker, and heavier of limb, the scales tell his 
story with one hundred and eighty-five. But while 
physically small as a boy,— and by no means gargan- 
tuan as a man, with a stature of five feet, seven inches, 
—young Richard was proportioned with such accuracy 
and nice purpose of power that his strength of limb 
and body was a proverb before he'd gained his fifteenth 
year. This muscle-force among savages and boys has 
ever been a pedestal of dignity, and frequently marks 
the leader; and the fact that young Richard from his 
pinafore days was a captain among his companions, by 
virtue of some tacit commission granted by them, may 
find its source therein. 

This element of physical strength is not to be de- 
spised. It sits on the front row with other forms of 
genius. Nor is it bound to modesty and to be uncov- 
ered in the presence of mere intelligence, or a genius of 
some other, gaudier hue. Your Tom Cribb takes his 
place with your Newton, your Lely, your Phidias, your 
Wren, your Handel, or what champion you will. He 
got his brawn where Newton got his brains,— at the 



PHYSICAL GENIUS. 21 

same bargain counter of Nature, and paid the same 
price. Why, then, may he not wear the one as proudly 
as the other does the last? Or why should some genius 
of ear, or eye, or hand of nerve-fineness, look over the 
poor fist-genius who is born to batter those features of 
mouth and nose and ears and eyes which a Lely is born 
to paint, a Phidias to carve, a Handel to compose a 
hymn for, and for which a Wren or an Angelo is to 
build a church? Even that poor thing, a millionaire, 
one vulgarly such from his cradle, is warranted of as 
much pride in his money as any of these in his gift. 
He came to his special capital of a million by the same 
effort that each of the others came to his — that is, 
none at all. Wherefore, then, should any be swollen 
when so brief a comment exhibits that the fat man 
of a sideshow is born heir to as much of honest honor 
as any Columbus sailing, or any Herschel staring at a 
star? 

There is one story of young Richard Croker which 
tells favorably of his progress. At the age of eleven 
he was by his preceptor installed "late monitor" of 
that school which, as aforesaid, daily droned at the cor- 
ner of Twenty-sixth Street and Madison Avenue. 
Here was credit; because no pupil not prompt and 
perfect in his studies, and on time at the morning bell- 
tap, ever rose to such a height. Yet there dwelt a peril 
in such eminence. It was the " late monitor's " duty 
to seek forth the truant in his desertion and bring him 
to school and to justice. And if the truant-felon were a 
sturdy rogue, one older, stronger, taller than the " late 
monitor," it might well befall that the latter would win 
much sore fortune in his work. This fact opened sadly 
to the eyes of young Richard on the first day of his 



22 , RlCSAiti) CROKm. 

high trust. Elate with promotion, young Eichard 
came to school clothed with his Sunday vestments, the 
better to glorify his exaltation. On this morning it 
had pleased the worshipful taste of the " biggest boy in 
school "—he was a turgid, sullen villain of a boy, and a 
bom battle hawk— to turn truant. Young Richard 
as " late monitor " was dismissed to his arrest. 

"And, Richard," observed the teacher by way of part- 
ing counsel, " if Bobby doesn't come peaceably, I'd let 
him alone. He is bigger, older, and stronger than you, 
and a bad, quarrelsome boy; and if he refuses to re- 
turn with you, it's no matter. I can tell his father 
to-night, and rest secure he'll flay him rarely." 

That the malefactor was older and bigger than he, 
young Richard knew; that he was stronger, he much 
doubted. Moreover, the suggestion to tamely accept 
refusal of arrest from the derelict, and return without 
him, met with no grace from young Richard, who was 
himself of a proud stomach, and in whom dwelt a war- 
willingness none the less healthy for being generally 
asleep. He made private decision to engage the enemy 
if he showed his teeth. However, he offered no retort 
to the teacher's cautious advice, and felt nothing be- 
yond regret that in a foolish weakness to be splendid 
he'd worn his " new clothes," and so exposed them to 
that present rough weather whereof the overture was 
at hand. 

Young Richard located his quarry in Thompson's 
Tavern, a hostelry just across Madison Square from the 
schoolhouse, and which stood on the now site of the 
Fifth Avenue Hotel. As the teacher had fore-feared, 
Bobby refused every suggestion of school. He would 
have none of it for that day; and waived aside the com- 



THE LATE MONITOR. 23 

mand of the " late monitor/' and as well his argument, 
as trifles light as air. 

With a sigh for his "new clothes," but never a hint 
in his young heart of quitting his capture now it was 
made, the " late monitor " unbuckled to his task. The 
war was long, desperate, and red; for Bobby, obdurate, 
strong, and hard of temper, stiff-necked and perverse, 
was no simple enterprise. But the "late monitor" had 
his way. His soul was as immitigably set against de- 
feat in that day as it has been since. AVith the last 
word, Bobby, broken-hearted, subjugated, and with a 
face like a scandal, was haled to that teacher and 
those books on which he'd turned his morning back. 
But the "late monitor's" costume had forfeited its title 
of "new." Tatters, rags, and earth-stains, the pride 
had gone from it, a sacrifice to duty. Bobby was no 
better off; and as he pillowed his errant head that night 
he could look back on a day busy with desolation. The 
" late monitor " had mauled him, the teacher had fer- 
uled him, and his parent, a teamster, had gridironed 
his hide with the ancestral cart whip. 

This tale of boyish chance-medley would have but 
idle use save for that it tells, at an early age, of the 
high heart and that incapacity of failure which has 
brought the subject of this sketch so far. There is a 
character of mugwump-moralist, who, himself of flac- 
cid muscle and a hare's heart, is found to set physical 
courage, with physical strength, low in the list of 
virtues. These poodle-folk— lapdogs of Money they 
frequently are, or vassal-nurses of such lap-furniture— 
these poodle-folk, I say, railing at mastiff-folk, are 
wrong. They make the error common of our vain hu- 
manity, and believe that everything to differ from 



24 BICHABD CROKER. 

themselves is worse than themselves. Physical stamina 
and courage, and of that sandstone sort that will, when 
needs crowd, stay the brunt of actual, physical conflict, 
is the first requisite of your best man; and he may no 
more be constructed wanting these, than might a house 
wanting foundations and footing stones. There is, 
to misplace a word, a phrenology of muscle which has 
precedence over other phrenologies, and a good heart is 
oftener child of a good stomach than of a good head. 

To the ear of our mugwump-moralist this will trench 
on savagery. Yet that is no harm. We cheat our- 
selves with an appearance, and call it civilization. 
And while we do, there's much of argument to leave it 
far from sure that the perfect savage is not the perfect 
man. Your philosopher, aware of his limitations, 
might admit the possibility of a civilization which 
would be superior to savagery. Also your philosopher, 
alive to a gravitation in manners and in morals as much 
as to a gravitation in matter, might well doubt if there 
was ever one so good. There be those on the ramparts 
of an isolated, high indifference who, viewing the sub- 
ject, have in it no interest other than the interest of 
discussion. Such at the worst are unbiased. To these 
your civilization is the putridity of that meat which as 
savagery was sound and hale. They would name you 
a flock of evils owned of civilization which are stran- 
gers to the savage, before you might credit one virtue 
to civilization which savagery lacks. Conceit may 
clamor and self-love take the floor; the fact lives that 
man is physical before he's either moral or mental, 
and that the stomach sways the soul. 

True! there is a school of high-thinking adherents of 
the over-soul to be shocked by this. With talents for 



THE OVER-SOULERS. 25 

melody rather than deep thought, these are to be con- 
vinced by word-Jingling. Mistaking sensation for 
sense, they discover the reasonable by discovering the 
rhythmic. These will defy the above. Such melo- 
dious intelligences, with whom tempo, not substance, 
controls, may be marched or waltzed or polkaed to a 
conclusion without understanding a premise or realiz- 
ing the route which disputation takes. 

Once, to illustrate, a congregation of these folk, gifted 
with music-boxes instead of minds, was gathered unto 
itself to read and consider, sentence by sentence, an 
ambling output of that Emerson who is Mahomet of 
their creed. 

" Education is the tar-pot of civilization," read the 
loud elocutionist intrusted with the book; that was the 
first sentence. 

Discussion, not to say elucidation, was now a happy 
order. What did Emerson mean? For a moment the 
congregation was silent; only for a moment. Then it 
broke forth. The Concord disquisitor was easily 
understandable. There were a dozen ready to expound 
him. The sentence was of those rugged figures 
for which Emerson had fame. It was rude, but none 
the less lucent and beautiful. It was the rough 
nugget where others, of a vainer and more artificial 
merit, would have given one the conventional beaten 
gold. That was it. " Education is the tar-pot of 
civilization! " Why, surely! it was as plain as the nose 
on one's face! 

It chanced that the reader took another look at the 
book. Horrors! there had been a misdeal. It wasn't 
"tar-pot." It read: "Education is the tap-root of 
civilization." All this explanation and appreciation 



26 RICnARD CHOKER. 

had gone adrift. That metaphor of the " tar-pot," 
clear a moment before, closed like a clam and became 
at once inscrutable. The congregation adjourned, 
leaving its that day's worship of the phrase-saint 
hanging by the gambrels. 

Those who, while enthroning the mental and the 
sentimental, would make plebeian the physical, should 
be brought to this reflection. There is no wife to love 
her husband so dearly, should a toothache be made the 
penalty of her love, curable only by divorce, but would 
fde her petition by the week's close. This is offered 
not for any lightness of a wife's love; rather for that 
it is the strongest sentiment of which humanity is en- 
dowed. No, forsooth! the physical is in the saddle; 
savagery sits on a hill! 

This sketch, to say least, is becoming highly excur- 
sive. There will be those of its readers, doubtless, to 
marvel at its long legs and erratic wanderings. I may 
as well vouchsafe a syllable of explanation. When I 
began, after some thought on that point of discursive- 
ness, I took the bridle off and turned my pencil out to 
pasture. It will graze where God pleases, and where 
the grass of that moment grows best to its taste. Like 
Sterne's " Tristram Shandy," and Southey's " Doctor," 
this book is like to touch a multitude of matter other 
than its subject. But to recur: 

It has ever been, to me at least, a matter of wonder 
that civilization was so denunciatory of savagery; so 
imperiously certain of its own superiority thereunto. 
You who read this, and whose warm, brave wisdom is 
capable of initiatory decision without waiting for some 
other to speak first, tell yourself, or, if you will, tlio 
world, wherein civilization, as we find and define the 




ElCHARD CROKER AS A YOUTH. 



£u Courtesy of McChu-e's Magazine. 
Copyright, ino/. The S. S. McClure Company. 



CIVILIZA TION-SA VAGERT. 27 

term, offers such successful best methods of this paltry 
existence of ours? You know New York, its people 
fretting like maggots, as many as four thousand in one 
block; you know the good and evil ground at these 
mills. Say, then, wherein are the folk present of this 
island fortressed of a surer comfort than those red- 
savage folk who abode here three centuries ago? Is 
liberty your lodestar? Is it that to guide you? Why, 
then, who had liberty in such perfection as the savage? 
He had, too, his laws, and respected them; he had his 
tribe, and was a patriot fit to talk with William Tell. 
He fought his foe like a Eichard of England, and loved 
his friend like a Jonathan. As for his religion — why, 
man, the test of religion is death. And your savage 
met, and still meets, death with a fortitude — and what 
is fortitude, but faith? — ^which few Christians are 
found to mate. And there were none without whom 
he feared; no one within to molest him and make him 
afraid. He paid neither homage to power nor taxes 
to men; and yet his privileges were as wide as the 
world's rim. His franchises of fagot, vert, and venison 
had never a limit. He might eat a deer a day, and 
burn a cord of wood to its cookery. It may be said, 
again, that he lived a better life, with more victory of 
liberty, comfort, and content, than ninety-five per 
cent, of New York folk to-day. He had more of free- 
dom, and was more his own man, than any you are to 
meet on Broadway. 

Civilization is an artifice, and there be those so 
trapped thereby that they conceive of no triumph of 
the natural. They are " cultured," evince it by coats 
from Bell and gowns by Felix, and find thought-models 
in Chesterfield's "Letters" to his son. They will 



28 RICHARD CROKER. 

compliment a sunset by saying that it looks like a scene 
in opera. 

As I write this, I look up to one of these climaxes of 
an enlightened age; I ask him what name he regards 
as a first expositor of civilization. He promptly gives 
the palm to Chesterfield. 

"Yes, indeed! " says he; " I hold that civilization in 
its best expression means gentility; and Chesterfield 
taught the best gentility in the world. Horace Wal- 
pole was next." 

As side-light on these highest types, not to say 
teachers, of our civilization, it might be added that 
Walpole, who chattered scandal and cheap tittle-tattle 
throughout nine volumes without one word of any 
virtue that dwelt above the pocket, found his own 
paternity at bay in a fog-bank of doubt. Chesterfield, 
on his part, wedded the illegitimate daughter of the 
First George and the courtesan Duchess of Kendal; 
was called " a dirty little tea-table scoundrel who talks 
scandal and makes trouble in families," by his unac- 
knowledging brother-in-law, George the Second; and 
wrote the very letters which are such " lessons of gen- 
tility " to a son of the left hand who wore the bar sinis- 
ter with the Chesterfield arms. Of the letters them- 
selves. Dr. Johnson said to Boswell, that " they taught 
the morals of a harlot with the manners of a dancing 
master." 

Excellent exemplars these, of a vaunting civilization! 
I hold the red savage to be a better man than either. 
No, I do not seek, nor even care, to set the brakes on 
any onward, and mayhap downward, rush of what is 
named " civilization." And if I could do so, lodged in 
nn indifference to any racial end, I would not turn 



CIVILIZATION— ALCOHOL. 29 

hand nor head to start or steer or stop the age. I am 
alone eager over two points. Being civilized myself, 
dwelling in the midst of its results and as much its 
bondslave as any other, I would still testify to an 
intelligence equal to the discovery of the swindle of 
it, added to an honesty sufficient for that discovery's 
setting-forth. Civilization! it is like an appetite for 
alcohol. The evidence which protects the one will 
save the other. 



III. 



SCHOOL DAYS — A TRADE. 

Jaq. Then the whining; schoolboy, with his satchel, 

And shining morning face, creeping like snail 
Unwillingly to school. 

— As You Like It. 

Theee was in the fifties a grammar school in East 
Twenty-seventh Street which had certain renown in its 
day for birch and thoroughness. It was ruled over 
by one Lafayette Olney, who was learned, stern, and 
grim. Moreover, he was a man of conscience; which, 
for the students, made matters worse. In that day all 
pedagogues were derived from Massachusetts; and it 
may have been, albeit gossip is tongueless as to the fact, 
that our Olney, the Dr. Birch adverted to of fifty years 
ago, was of a clan with that later one — half ice, half 
iron — who took place as Attorney General in a day of 
Grover Cleveland. There was a chill brittleness of 
temper owned of both which might go some space to 
prove this. 

Exhausting the supply at Twenty-sixth Street and 
Madison Avenue, young Richard Croker, at the age of 
twelve, reported for a further and higher enlighten- 
ment to the Olney Grammar School. There he toiled 
four years, and then went forth with the mark of a fair 
scholarship in such branches, and to such limits, as 
made up the programme of learning with that place. 
That was the last of young Richard's book-studies. 
W 



CROKER'8 EDUCATION. 31 

There has been much said of invidious, sneering sort 
touching the book-attainments of Kichard Croker. 
Those folk of falsity and venom who at one time put 
fictional millions in his pocket for the sake of asking 
on a next mud-flinging occasion, " Where did you 
get it ? " — spur themselves at another in efforts to 
clothe him with the book-ignorance of a Hottentot. 
This last is warp and woof of the same bolt of cloth 
with kindred untruths to curl the tongue of daily en- 
mity of Croker. His book-acquirements compare 
evenly with theirs who, graduating at our common pub- 
lic schools, stand on the threshold of a preparation for 
our universities. At that point where others go to 
college, young Kichard Croker halted in his book- 
searchings to learn a trade. And many of the greatest 
names of history did the like, and met no injury 
thereby. 

Your college is graceful; and yet it by no means 
must be in this world of ours. It is ornamental; but 
like the brass-work and dead-wood about a ship that 
make no mighty contribution whether to the safety or 
the speed of the vessel. There's too much granted in 
favor of a course at college. And results do not sus- 
tain the concession. 

It was a handful of years astern when a gentleman — 
a writer he was — visited one of these, our high semi- 
naries; one not breathlessly distant from Boston. 
The magazine article he was cormnissioned to write 
would be excellent advertisement of the school. 
Therefore the invader was chaperoned in his lookings 
about, and replied to in his question-putting by one of 
the college heads. It would be impolite to name him; 
it is enough to say that he was one commissioned of 



32 RICHARD CROKER. 

highest authority, so far as the college was concerned. 
He might take the institution and put " her full steam 
ahead," or " set her back on both wheels," as river folk 
might say, just as he should decide. I wax thus nau- 
tical, perhaps, because in their pretense our colleges 
occur in a character of ferryboat, bearing the traveler 
in search of learning from his natural shore of dark 
illiteracy to that other blinding of book-light. 

Our college chief and the emissary of ink fell into 
joint debate. It was provoked by the visitor, who was 
thereunto incited by an irritation which had been 
gnawing about the roots of his temper for two 
New England days. He had come from the West. To 
questions, he confessed this ignobility of emanation; 
also, that specifically he was not born in New England, 
didn't live in New England, never, in purblind and 
degrading truth, had seen New England until this 
visiting occasion. These facts known, our wayfarer 
was at once entreated with a tolerant commiseration 
— a pitying disdain — by those whom he encountered, 
and whose brighter fortunes made them born children 
to the soil. In brief, the natives patronized him with 
an air which was two parts charity and one contempt, 
for that regional misfortune of his Western birth. 
Thus was our writer roiled and made subject to hot re- 
sentments. Thus, perhaps, was he become willing to dis- 
turb with interrogations, such as a Goth might put to 
a Eoman, the lofty complacency of that great educator 
who, from a two-ply motive composed of willingness to 
answer queries and anxiety to make safe whatever of 
personal property, both loose and little, might be lying 
about, was guide to his tour. It was that old question 
which Cicero stole from Lucius Cassius: Cui hono? 



THE COLLEGE GOOD. 33 

" What good is your college? " asked the writer- 
barbarian of the educator; " I've been, as it were, all 
through your institution with a lantern. I've gazed at 
your libraries, I've glanced at your dining-halls. I've 
experienced your recitation rooms, and borne testimony 
to your gymnasiums, where students ambitious of 
fractures or dislocations may find every last appliance 
to aid them on their way. But at the finish I'm moved 
to ask: WTiat good is it — what does the student get? " 

" I don't understand," retorted the educator. 

" This is the idea," explained the barbarous one. 
" The value of anything depends on comparison of 
what one gives with what one gets. No one will part 
with dollars to gain dimes. Everything in its attain- 
ment must cost less than it comes to, or the investment 
is a failure. You have told me that you can take a 
youth of fifteen of certain book acquirements and give 
him one year of preparation. Then with four years at 
your college he is graduated; in all five years. At fif- 
teen it is a popular theory that one has fifty-five years 
to live; a theory, be it told, against which insurance 
tabulations militate. Taking the common view of it, 
however, you demand of the student — besides the fees 
— one-eleventh of his life. Therefore I ask: What do 
you promise the student in return? What unusual 
ammunition do you furnish him withal, which is to ren- 
der him more than usually effective on the firing 
line of life? Your bed and board don't count; for they 
would doubtless find their equals in those feasts and 
feather beds which he left behind at home. Your 
athletics don't count; for every health result would 
have as prompt a coming if the student involved himself 
with a plow, or a pile of cordwood, for spaces similar to 



34 mCHARD CROKM. 

those expended in the gym. The benefit must there- 
fore lurk in the curriculum. And so, I ask again: In 
exchange for that one-eleventh of his whole remaining 
capital of years, what does the student take?" 

" You will not deny," observed the pedagogue, with 
a cold acrimony, " that the student gets a finished 
education ? " 

" It might be complained," replied the barbarian, 
" that you too much limit the definition of the term 
* education.' A man might know about a coal mine; 
how to discover, and open, and work, and market his 
igneous, jet vein of wealth. If that were all, you'd call 
him ignorant. Lacking this knowledge, however, and 
with an ability to read Greek, he might lay claim to 
' education.' One might be wise enough, and of such 
deft, ingenious hand as to build and sail a ship around 
the globe. If that were to be the measure of his ac- 
quirement you'd write him ignorant. Wanting these 
abilities, still were he capable of some utter jugglery 
of sky-high mathematics; or to translate Cgesar, Sal- 
lust, and Virgil as he ran, you might permit him coin- 
age and circulation as an educated man. I trust that 
I neither ruffle nor weary you; but speaking of the 
usual and so-called classical courses of your school, and 
of the good to be child thereof, I'll say that I myself 
have studied both Latin and Greek until I was ex- 
hausted, if the languages were not, and I'll take two 
bits for all the good that's flowed from it. And to put 
it bluntly: Of what use is the employ of Latin and 
Greek to him who on the lines of law, or medicine, or 
commerce, or literature, to say nothing of trades and 
callings which grapple more with the physical, must 
win his daily bread? " 



GREEK AND LATIN. 35 

"Greek and Latin!" exclaimed the educator, and 
his tones had that horror which a priest of turbaned 
Ind might feel at insult done his idol. "Of what 
use is it to teach Greek and Latin? " 

" Not teach; study," interrupted the barbarian. " I 
can discern a profit in teaching them; but speakin- 
from the student's end of the alley, I ask, why should 
one study them? " 

"Why? Even in your own business of writing," 
cried the educator, with an anti-iconoclastic snort "it 
IS worth one's while. It is of immense importance. 
The study of Latin and Greek would teach you the 
derivation of words— of the very words you use." 

"And why is that important?" pursued the bar- 
barian. " As a matter of fact, you're wrong twice 
The languages you urge are but halfwav houses on the 
trail of tongues. One might learn that this word, or 
that, had come blundering down the lanes of time from 
the Greeks or Latins. But where they got the word 
a^ a query, would be left in the dark. Permitting that 
thought to drift, however, and speaking as one who 
lives by them, I must still point out that the deriva- 
tion of a word is of no more mark to one who writes 
or talks than is the derivation of a potato or a 
biscuit to one who eats, m^y should the banqueter 
burn with mad concern as to whether Russia or Dakota 
was mother of the wheat, or Bermuda or Colorado gave 
the potato birth? The culmination with our supposi- 
titious Lucullus is biscuit in one instance, potato in the 
other, and the advance guard of his interest pushes no 
further afield. And so of words. Their ancestry is 
only of imaginary moment. Surely, its discovery isn't 
worth one-eleventh of one's life. The exploration of 



36 RICHARD CROKER. 

one's own ancestry, and to know one's own personal 
derivation, would not — unless the estate were a 
bouncer — be worth the loss of one year of life. And 
is one to give five years to locate the profitless head- 
waters of a word ? " 

Young Richard was now sixteen and must push his 
worldly way. He resolved to acquire the craft of a 
locomotive machinist, and with such plan in his mind 
found enlistment as apprentice in the Harlem shops. 
And in those days that was a brave beginning. 

In 1859 New York City was a fairer field of effort, 
whether one followed a profession or a trade, than it is 
to-day. Millionaires were not so rife; there was none 
so rich, none so deadly poor as now, and fortune had 
more even distribution. The artisan was of respect 
and decent weight. He was not taught at every angle 
of the day his infinitesimal quantity, personal and 
political, in the equation of general life. And he 
came to more. The town was smaller by nine-tenths. 
One is of ten times the remark in a community of three 
hundred and fifty thousand folk that one is in one of 
three million and five hundred thousand. And men's 
view of wealth was smaller. Then he was rich who 
had twenty thousand dollars; to-day he is poor with a 
half million. 

This last is to hatch woe like a serpent; it does now. 
The present sows the wind of discontents not to be 
satisfied; the future, gusty with revolution, is to reap 
the whirlwind. The common imagination has been 
debauched. Until one has at least five hundred thou- 
sand dollars one is of no New York notice, even by 
one's self. Without it there are folk one cannot know, 
places one cannot go, tilings one cannot have, and 



THE WALL STREET WAT. Si 

others one cannot do. And he who starts with no 
capital save healthy head and hands has no more of 
present chance of gaining live hundred thousand dol- 
lars, by methods which Heaven will call honest, than he 
has— if such should be his thought— of haltering the 
Hudson. There's but one way, the Wall Street way— 
the way of the gambler. This truth, which many souls 
of commingled mendacity and ignorance will deny, has 
such broad concession that every man, not rich by 
inheritance, and who reaches for something better than 
a destiny of hand-to-mouth, is in the ring of the stock 
market or training for the conflict. 

More than one half the present money made in New 
York is not the reward of toil in any honest sense; it 
is won at stock-hazard. And that, frequently, by 
methods of lie and cheat and swindle which would de- 
stroy with the disgrace of them the commonest faro- 
den. Were it not for the laws, and an innate thinness 
of profit to dwell therein, one might better in many 
eases turn from stocks to be of the craft of a pick- 
purse; for with morals of a par, the padder at least 
escapes the Wall Street vice of an inevitable treachery 
to one's friends. 

Long ago the homestead of Captain Kidd, the pirate, 
occupied the site of the present Stock Exchange. I 
mentioned the fact on chance occasion to a speculatcr 
whose breadth of operation dealt in nothing less than 
millions. A gleam shone in his gray, bold-searching eye. 
'•' Captain Kidd, eh! " he chuckled. " Well, if he'll 
return, he'll find his former residence in possession of 
people who could teach him his trade. There are 
those about there now who would, by comparison, make 
Captain Kidd appear like a canal deck-hand." 



38 RICHARD CROKER. 

That deep courtier of the tape, in his scorn of Kidd 
and the latter's childish, black-flag commerce, was jnst. 
The modern pirate lives ashore; he has stock com- 
panies, not ships; his batteries are dollars and he trains 
his guns with the eye of fraud; he plunders a whole 
public at once, and not the trivial cargo of one cheap, 
starved keel. Aye! by the standards of this day. Cap- 
tain Kidd would have been laughed to death for his 
simplicity, not hanged for his crimes. 

In instance: There was a recent college-taught youth 
— and the stream of his family found its head among 
the wooden shoes and spinning wheels of the ancient 
Knickerbockers — whose debt-budget as he graduated 
was large enough to give his parent a pang. 

" How came you to owe so much? " asked the parent, 
with that earnest severity which springs from a 
wounded bank-balance; " I can't understand how you 
got so deeply in debt." 

" It was for money borrowed to pay my losses at 
poker," returned the son. 

"What!" cried the parent; "have you been gam- 
bling? " 

" Certainly I have," retorted the son; " you surely 
should understand, father, that we gentlemen must 
gamble." 

" Then we gentlemen must win," replied the father. 

This rebuke of the old gentleman is valuable, be- 
cause it is in everything the text from which the daily 
sermon of New York City life is preached. There is; 
no longer a moral side to "business," Get money! 
methods are of no moment; get money! Without it 
you are nothing; with it, everything. Money calls for 
no apology, poverty cannot be explained — in New 



THE HARLEM SHOPS. 39 

York. Possess yourself of money, enough money, and 
none will arise to discuss the strategy, however black, 
by which you managed its capture. The, New York 
City decalogue lies buried in that objurgation of the 
lather: " We gentlemen must win." 

Young Richard Croker worked in the Harlem shops 
until far into his twenties. And he learned his trade 
and was a master machinist at the end. In a day when 
the hand wrought most and its task gained small aid 
of machinery, young Eichard built a locomotive engine 
complete, from the tire on its driver to the bonnet on 
its stack; fired it up, and ran it out of the shops on its 
initial trial. 

At this time Richard Croker was as silently modest 
as he is to-day. It is remembered among those who 
were then his companions, that he had a predeliction 
for dress. When the " whistle blew " it was his first 
concern to get home; his next to bathe, and to don his 
finest raiment. When he sat down to supper— they ate 
dinner at noon in that crude hour — he was as well ap- 
pareled as his wardrobe would permit. 

This soap-and-water tendency, and as well that weak- 
ness of the spick-and-span, won young Richard the 
unsafe repute of dandyism. I say " unsafe," because 
his fellows of the shop, who wore in the evening the 
dress they had worn at their work, felt somewhat criti- 
cised by this white-shirt splendor and hailed it as of a 
spirit which felt above its caste. Their objections 
might have taken unpleasant physical form, for they 
were of a lusty brood, and hard knocks were going, had 
it not been that young Richard owned other virtues of 
a stout-heart kind which counterbalanced his insult- 
ing cleanliness and compelled them to a truce. 



40 RICHARD CROKER. 

Young Richard was a profound and untiring athlete. 
His natural physical powers, as noted, were tre- 
mendous. These he was scrupulous to multiply by every 
form of physical exercise. He walked, he ran, he 
wrestled, he boxed, he swam. It is told of his strength, 
by a former Harlem shopmate, that more than once he 
beheld young Richard, while a helper turned the iron 
on the anvil, beat out the metal with a forty-five pound 
hammer in each hand. Nor was it done in any idle- 
ness of pride; the lad was working. Young Richard's 
prodigious strength was ever a cause of wonderment 
among his companions. Remembering the tale of 
Samson and the hirsute base of his supplies, they were 
inclined to attribute it to a thick fell of black hair 
which covered his back and shoulders to an extent com- 
parable only with the coat of a Newfoundland dog. 

Young Richard was at home in the water. Among 
those who have known him from his childhood, memory 
runneth not to a day when he wasn't an exhaustless 
swimmer. Off Long Branch on one occasion young 
Richard swam ten miles for his pleasure merely, and 
by way of holiday. 

Richard Croker, too, is one entirely convinced of 
the harmless quality of sharks. 

" We were at Palm Beach," said a friend in the 
course of a shark talk. " Croker, a general of the 
army, and myself were fishing for sharks at a retired 
part of the beach. We had no luck. It was a bit 
rough, and we couldn't throw our hooks and bait out 
beyond the rollers, where the sharks were waiting — a 
whole mass-meeting of them — apparently as zealous as 
ourselves for the success of that fishing. Following 
twenty minutes of futile effort to reach the sharks with 



SHARKS! SHARKS! 41 

our bait, Croker gave over the enterprise. Perhaps it 
was ten minutes later, I was still engaged, and had 
forgotten Croker, when to my terror and amazement I 
beheld him swimming about among the sharks, not a 
few of which were eight and ten feet long. Nor was 
the scare local with myself; the general was as white 
and sick as I. We both expected nothing less than 
that our friend was to become shark-meat with each 
moment. But nothing happened. The sharks, be- 
yond getting out of his way when he came too near, 
took no interest in him. They were as hungry as a 
band of politicians at that." 

Croker listened to this recital with a worried look. 
It irks him to find himself the star of any story. I 
asked concerning his strange confidence in the inno- 
cence of sharks. 

" It's entirely the truth," he replied; " a shark won't 
bite anybody. Of course, if one were to remain per- 
fectly quiet and passive in the water, some shark might 
try it. Or a shark might snap at your hand trailed 
over the side of a small boat. But of folk swimming 
or moving about they are afraid. They never were 
known to attack anyone, man or boy, under such con- 
ditions. On the other hand, they scurry out of the 
way. No one need fear the biggest shark that ever 
flaunted a fluke; one will be in no danger of attack from 
him." 



IV. 



ATHLETICS — SELF-DEFENSE. 

But when the bully with assuming pace, 

Cocks his broad hat, edged round with tarnished lace, 

Yield not the way — defy his strutting pride 

And thrust him to the muddy kennel's side. 

—Gay. 

"What of the town in the fifties?" said John 
Scannell, thoughtfully repeating the question. " From 
the middle fifties, for full a decade and a half, New 
York City lived what one might term a ' strenuous 
life ' — that is, the people did. The old volunteer fire 
companies, who fought one another as often as they 
fought fires, had their effect. Boxing was at a 
premium. To be a man of peace and sobriety was no 
protection. Thugs and roughs abounded, and they 
were the more ready to assail one whose look of re- 
spectability and quiet inclined them to a thought that 
he was 'easy.' A well-dressed stranger couldn't walk 
in certain regions along either river without being 
made to fight for his life. 

" Election day was the busy day of the ruffian. 
Then no Australian ballot law protected the poll. The 
quiet citizen was hustled, and bullied, and brow-beaten 
as to his vote. If he pleased the toughs with his 
ticket, well and good. He could vote; the thugs would 
protect him through the ordeal. If he held contrary 
views to theirs, frequently to save his bones he didn't 




Tammanv Hall. 



THE RUFFIAN'S BUST DAT. 43 

vote at all. Election day was a day of riot; folk not 
capable of self-protection were safer within doors. 

" But a change came, following the war. A counter- 
irritant developed; and the Bill Pooles, the Yankee 
SuUivans, and the Owney Geoghegans were sensibly di- 
minished. As one result of the Civil War, and during 
it, a great many pistols were made. They were of 
every size and sort, from the eight-inch navy which 
swung from a belt to the twenty-two caliber vest-pocket 
gun that didn't weigh two ounces. And a long-roll 
of thugs suffered pistol elimination. Everybody was 
carrying a weapon. The rough was no longer sure 
of his victim. He might select some harmless-looking 
consumptive as the object of assault. And the con- 
sumptive might develop into a masked battery. He 
might bring a pistol to bear on his enemy; and many a 
tough funeral was founded that way. It was impos- 
sible for the ruffian to make a safe match. 

" Self-preservation is as much a law of nature among 
plug-uglies as among purer, better folk; and there- 
fore it was that in the face of pistol-perils which 
he couldn't foresee, and against which his quality as a 
rough-and-tumble bruiser gave him no security, the 
plug-ugly was modified, and brawl and disturbance be- 
came exceptional where before they were the order of 
the day. 

" In this hour, which is the quietest and of the least 
disorder of any that New York has known during the 
half century of which I have personal memories, the 
' dress-suit ' has captured the town. That sounds odd, 
but it's true. The ' dress-suit,' or evening garb, is no 
longer the privilege of the rich alone. It has become 
the property of all. Every tug-man, and truck-driver. 



44 RICHARD CROKER 

and everyone else, are proprietors of ' dress-suits.' 
Your tug-man lays aside his overalls at the close of the 
day, and if ' hop ' or ' function ' be the evening's pro- 
gramme of his ' set,' you'll find him present thereat, 
arrayed to the nines. Full evening dress! white kids, 
cloak overcoat, and crush hat, he sports the full regalia. 

" And it follows, as the day the night, that our tug- 
man must live up to his costume. He must be polite, 
courteous, a gentleman of dignity. And he must not 
fight. I am not one of those who believe that the 
clothes make the man; but I incline to a theory that 
they have a deal to do with making a man behave. 
There is a morality of the ' dress-suit.' I regard even- 
ing dress sfs a great preserver of the public peace; 
more so, by far, than the police. That's the now con- 
dition of afl'airs: the 'dress-suit' has conquered the 
town; safety, courtesy, and peace are the profits of it." 

Richard Croker, who saw his young manhood during 
that period spoken of by Scannell as being an era 
wherein the town witnessed its greatest fistic activities, 
became perfect as a boxer. There was no youth more 
moral in the city. He drank no liquors, he visited no 
saloons, he did not set foot in a brothel, and his lan- 
guage was without taint of profanity or violence. 
These were characteristics of his young manhood; 
they have found emphasis with every day he has lived. 
Eichard Croker has been, and is, in the matter of per- 
sonal morals, a lesson. 

For these reasons of his moralities, in a day when a 
man's hand must keep his head or his rights suffer in- 
vasion and defiance, young Richard took up boxing as 
a purpose serious and worth while. At this game he 
had towering natural advantages. To a giant's strength 



THE BOXING SCHOOL. 45 

and an iron courage he added the activity of a goat. 
Nor was it long when his supremacy at the gymnasium 
was admitted. There was none of his fellows who 
might contend with him. 

It was while perfecting himself in sparring and kin- 
dred exercises that something chanced which made 
boxing circles vocal with the name of Richard Croker. 
The instructor in the gymnasium affected by young 
Richard was one Otengen. This latter was of huge 
physical powers, famed for the force and fury of 
his blows, and, saving the names of a few professional 
fighting men of the Yankee Sullivan order, conceded 
to be unclassed among the gladiators of the town. 
Young Richard was among his pupils; and under his 
tutelage sparred himself into the notice of those who 
were workers or visitors at that gym. It befell one day 
when an unusual audience was present that our in- 
structor notified young Richard that he was to box with 
him; that he must do his best. 

" This is to be earnest, Richard," observed Otengen 
as he tied the gloves on his follower's hands; " I hear 
great stories about you from the others, and I'm going 
to try you out. I won't spare you, so do all you know." 

Young Richard said nothing. He accepted the ad- 
vice of the instructor, however, and determined to " do 
his best." It was supposed by some who witnessed the 
bout that Otengen, irritated a bit by the growing re- 
pute of his disciple, deemed it wise to lower the latter's 
vanity. It was Otengen's duty as well as joy to do this. 
Joy, because your true boxing master, working hour 
after hour with a bevy of feather-blown folk, every one 
of whom he is afraid to hurt, feels as does he who wears 
bonds. Therefore comes it that his heart leaps lamb- 



46 RICHARD CROKER. 

like in his bosom when, getting someone before him for 
whose bones he has no concern, he may cast repression 
to the winds and give to the slaughter instinct within 
him freest head. Otengen arranged to reduce young 
Eichard's opinion of himself with sentiments of satis- 
faction. He was to have much happiness. He would 
cut the comb of this cockerel in a friendly, almost 
fatherly, way. It would tend to subdue the cockerel's 
conceit, and make for his modesty and regeneration. 
Surely, with forty-five pounds the better of the weights, 
it would be imbecile to suppose that he, Otengen, was 
to run a risk! 

No story by rounds exists of this battle. If that 
long-ago gymnasium had been the lists of Ashby, and I 
were Sir Walter Scott; or if the combat whose story 
pends had been that mailed and mighty set-to between 
Sir John Holland and Sir Reginald de Roye, and I were 
a Froissart, there might be managed a history of ex- 
cessive brightness at this point. But aJas! for myself, 
I limp from a dullness of imagination, am lame with a 
poverty of detail, and may only record this glove-tilt 
as the tale is given me. 

Thus trots narrative: The parties most in violent 
interest faced each other; their guards were up on 
principles invented by the venerated Cribb. Otengen, 
four inches the taller, stood over young Richard like 
a tower. The two moved about each other like cats; 
their hands went in and out, " fiddling " for an open- 
ing. Then Otengen leaped in to his labors. It was all 
hurly-burly. There was jab! and hook! and jolt! and 
counter! and cross-counter! biff! bang! smash! For 
a finish, young Richard's head and shoulders struck the 
mat, and the round — London rules — was at an end. 



LEADS AND COUNTERS. 4V 

Our knights went each to his corner; those students 
of fisticuffs who had been detailed as seconds worked 
towel and sponge. At the end of a half minute — a 
cruel short time, as he who boxes finds — that visitor 
who prevailed as referee called: 

" Time! " 

And again the combatants stood forth. 

There was a mouse-hued lump over young Richard's 
temple where he stopped the Otengen blow when he 
went down. There were no wagers on the battle be- 
tween master and follower; and if there had been, what 
with Otengen's size and hardy reputation, it would 
have been, in the language of sport, " apples to ashes 
on the big one." 

It should be noted, however, that young Richard in 
no wise indorsed these odds in his heart. There is an 
optimism of the thoroughbred, whether man or horse 
or dog, — an inborn confidence in a good time coming 
when the cup of victory will be full, — that hedges the 
soul against any touch of failure. Such folk may be 
slain; they cannot be defeated. And young Richard 
was thoroughbred. 

This second round was much the fashion of war- 
party with the first. Its close found young Richard 
again on his back; a trifle ensanguined of a flush hit on 
the nose, otherwise hearty and hopeful. The third 
round was twin of the second; and its last chapter the 
old story of, " Knock-down for Otengen." 

It was the fourth round which beheld the end, and 
with it the laurels lost of Otengen. The latter, full of 
a ruinous gayety, was doing the leading; his future held 
no clouds of doubt. Young Richard on his part was in 
no whit dismayed; those three times when he had found 



48 niCHARD CROKER. 

the floor served no purpose save the quick arousal of 
his every energy. Young Eichard was improved by 
them; his sparring was cleaner and his blows were 
swifter, harder than at first. The smashing attack of 
Otengen had fired him; his steam was up. This fourth 
round was of that warm and vivid nature so com- 
mendable in the others. It was lead! and stop! and 
counter! and no one running away. 

Abruptly came the close, with the bang and sudden 
vim of some wind-slammed door. Otengen was trying 
for a blow which should put the roof on that round. 
He sprang forward and shot his left at the mouse-hued 
lump which nestled above young Richard's eyebrow. 
But the latter wasn't there. Hand and foot and eye 
kept time like a chorus. Young Richard stepped to 
the right; the Otengen glove whistled like a bird in 
harmless passage by his left ear. Coincident therewith, 
young Richard's left struck Otengen where the short 
ribs end, while his right whipped over the big boxer's 
shoulder and reached the jaw with a crash. This last 
blow was like unto the kick of a pony. Otengen said 
later that it was as though he'd struck against the pole 
of a dray. The muscles of foot and leg and back and 
shoulder and arm were drawn on for fullest contribu- 
tion. Young Richard piled the whole weight and 
power of his trained one-hundred-and-forty-pound 
body into the swing. And it did the work. 

Otengen went down, and as it were a pole-axed ox. 
His adherents bore him to his corner; swamped him 
with sponges, and whipped him dry with towels. It 
was of no avail. Otengen slept the sleep of no dreams 
for full ten minutes; and when he opened his eyes his 
glories had faded and departed away. The master had 



THE RUFFIAN'S FEAR. 49 

been mastered; the pupil was graduated and had taken 
his degree. 

This battle made a flutter; none the less for that 
Otengen had been smote senseless at the end. In that 
day boxers knew of the " knock-out," but avoided it. 
They feared that death might follow. The sleep of 
Otengen, therefore, was a feature all but unique, and 
gave a wing to gossip. The encounter was the nine- 
day talk of the town; young Eichard was hailed a 
prodigy of boxing skill and strength. He was but 
twenty years of age at the time, and there's scant 
doubt that in those rough days which followed, when 
in politics he fought Tweed and O'Brien, protecting 
the ballot box from bludgeon-wielding thugs and driv- 
ing repeaters from the polls, he enjoyed a safety 
which was direct increase of his triumph over Otengen. 
Many have been the roughs and under-roughs — 
with orders which went even to the pitch of murder 
— who, knowing of his bout with Otengen, have 
looked into the even eyes of Richard Croker, and 
then, ^vith hearts turned to water and courage gone, 
skulked away without spoken word or upraised hand. 
There was something about him, whether of person- 
ality or dread repute, and probably of both, which 
cowed the hardiest ruffians. They seemed to smell a 
limitless trouble off him as one smells hidden fire in a 
house; and with a sense of peril on them, none the less 
profound for that it was vague and not defined, they 
parted before him like water, or drew away like sheep. 

Richard Croker surely owed much in security in 
after years to his youthful victory over Otengen. 
It is no bad thing to have thus a strain of the old 
Cromwell Ironsides in one's veins. It gives to one a 



50 niCHARD CROKER. 

conquering talent that is of enduring value in this life 
of ours, where it is in everyday evidence that might 
makes right, and none is allowed to win, nor even to 
keep his own, without a struggle. Whatever your 
white philosopher of peace may show as to what it 
might have been, existence is, in truth practical, but a 
wolf-war, — teeth without conscience, hunger without 
bounds, — and those are to come best off who, with 
even luck, are stanchest of arm and heart and brain. 

There have been, and doubtless there will be, those to 
straggle through the future as through the past in a 
ragged, false Indian-file of misstatement, one walk- 
ing in the footprints of another just ahead, to tell 
with other fictions that Richard Croker fought prize 
fights; that he was a fist champion of the ring. There 
is in such relations no thought of truth. Such 
slander has naught to stand on save the g}'mnasiuni 
combat with Otengen, and one further incident, the 
story whereof may as well be set forth here. 

It was just after the affair of Otengen. The work- 
men of the shops where young Richard toiled, together 
with their families, resolved on a holiday. They would 
hold a " picnic ' in Jones' Wood. This latter, being a 
grovy, tree-sown spot, charming with tall woods and 
cool, thick grass beneath, and, moreover, free of money- 
charge, was popular among poor folk who, with a mind 
to be occasionally sylvan, could not pay much for the 
privilege. Three or four hundred, men and women, 
boys and girls, gathered in Jones' Wood on the men- 
tioned picnic occasion. Young Richard, already a 
front figure among those of his age, rejoiced as a di- 
rector of the day. There was a deal of harmless glee; 
good feeling rose to highest mark. 



THE BULL- NECK STRANGER. 51 

Suddenly, near a booth where tables were being laid 
in behalf of the hungry, screams and much of fluttering 
agitation ensued. Young Kichard was in mid-tree, 
fastening the ropes of a swing. He glanced down at 
the tumult. His eye fell on a burly and unpleasant 
stranger, remarkable for broad shoulders and a bull- 
neck. The stranger had just enough of war-water to 
make him careless; and, with as much indifference to 
the proprieties as to property rights, was assailing the 
regale. This it was which brewed the disorder. The 
ladies made shrill and scolding protest. Small marvel! 
There's no woman who will burn and bend over pies 
and cakes, and then look with patience on their un- 
licensed bolting by the first hungry vandal who may 
stroll that way. 

Young Eichard came down the swing-rope, hand over 
hand and lightly as a cat. The caitiff out-lter at his un- 
bidden feast was not there by any right. He was not 
of that picnic party, and entitled neither to art nor 
part nor lot in the banquetiiig revels of that day. 
Moreover, he was insulting and coarsely abusive. But 
fell retribution was abroad. Young Richard de- 
scended upon him like a landslide. In the words of 
one who beheld the whirl of events, the invading rough 
" didn't last as long as a drink of whisky." Bruised 
and bleeding, he was cast, as it were, into outer dark- 
ness — flung over the fence. He wended, the most 
thoroughly trounced loafer who saw the light that 
day. 

This casting forth of the pie-Goth had its sequel. 
The latter was a dim figure of prize fighter, and felt 
much subsequent chagrin at the disaster which over- 
took him in Jones' Wood that picnic day. He mourned 



62 RICHARD CROKER. 

for that it hurt his fistic standing. His friends waited 
upon young Richard. 

" He was drunk when you did him," they said. " If 
he'd been sober you would have been beaten to rags. 
As it is, you've injured his reputation. If you're a fair 
man you'll meet him and give him a chance to recover 
his position, which was high and proud among fighting 
men until his drunkenness and desire for pies floor- 
managed his overthrow at your hands." 

This casuistry was received sourly enough by young 
Richard. He saw no justice in being crowded to battle 
with the prize fighter by virtue of what had transpired. 
He hadn't made the latter drunk; he hadn't trolled him 
into that pie-vandalage which was the immediate cause 
of his troubles. The drunken fighter may have lost 
place in those social circles which he honored, but the 
story gave no reason why young Richard should favor 
him with a meeting. 

Debate became trenchant. The committee of the 
injured warrior's friends made slurring intimation that 
the bug under the chip of young Richard's hesitation 
was fear. This proved too much. Twenty is not the 
year of coolness; no youth of that age may with resig- 
nation find his courage impugned. Young Richard 
granted the commission's claim. The wronged fighter, 
with every aid that sobriety might bring him, should 
have an opportunity to restore his torn and damaged 
honors. The hour and the day found names, and 
Jones' Wood — the theater of his ill-luck — was pitched 
on as a place where the complaining pugilist should be 
met and righted. 

Young Richard kept to the arrangement. On the 
prick of hour set he was at Jones' Wood, awaiting what 



THE CLOSED INCIDENT. 53 

fate his adversary might construct for him. 'But the 
other remained away. Whether he was ill, or seized 
of a fear, or held young Richard as too small a business, 
was neither discussed nor determined. It was enough 
that he didn't come; and, as saith diplomacy, " it is 
thus that the incident was closed." 



V. 



THE PRIZE FIGHTER. 

Why, then, we will have bellowing of beeves ; 
Broaching of barrels, brandishing of spigots. 

— Old Play. 

Our last chapter was out of breath with violence, and 
I am glad it's done. Not because I oppose events of 
sport; I but weary of their recital. However, as a 
philosopher who laughs, and who was bom to a scorn 
of hypocrisy, whether it wear surplice or come with 
meaner claim, I have been made often to smile at that 
snobbery which evinces itself by those varying fashions 
in which fist-sins, now and then visited by one gentle- 
man against another, are decided upon. There is 
no complexity in which the question, " Whose ox 
is gored?" or rather, "Whose ox does the goring?" 
is of such moment as in this matter of a fracas. The 
after-status of the rioter will ever depend, not on what 
he does, but on where he lives, and what rung of the 
ladder of life, socially and financially, — the terms are 
each the other's shadow, — he rests his foot. 

Our scene is a restaurant; one of those brilliant 
rooms, all blare of orchestra and glare of lights, where 
the half-world finds grounds of parade. Some male at- 
tacks another; tables crash, women scream, waiters 
scurry in the cause of peace. What is the decision? 
If the male disguised in liquor who has half murdered 
his fellow male, similarly en masque, be of our " aris- 
tocracy," and with a Fifth Avenue habitat, he is a " lad 

54 



THE BOXING-GOOD. 65 

of spirit "; what we have witnessed is that exuberance 
common of his years. If on the other and seamy hand 
our warrior should be one to earn a livelihood by day's 
labor of his hands, and whose address is Avenue A, he 
is a " ruffian " whose brawling is the bud of that 
native degeneracy and crime-instinct which is at, last to 
grant him Sing Sing, and the " Chair." Still, let it go; 
such debate has nothing of deep-sea consequence, and 
is curious, only, as offering some hint of that ex- 
cellent justice of classifications wherewith we transact 
life. 

As stated above, I rejoice that we be through with 
those melees wherewith the last chapter is so deeply 
fraught. And at that I would not be understood as 
one who gives his voice against the prize fighter. We 
want a gladiatorial class. It reflects itself in the swell- 
ing physical stamina and courage of a people. Prize 
fighters per se are of a doubtful use; but in the 
second remove they work steadily for good. The gen- 
eral youth of the land enfringe those ropes wherein our 
prize fighter toilfully pounds his adversary, who as toil- 
fully responds. The general youth become thrilled 
thereby, and emulous. This serves to make popular 
the art, of boxing, and every boy would shine thereat. 
And, as preliminary, he will seek for a clean health and 
that muscle-strength without which comes no fist 
success. 

In these directions and on such terms your prize 
fighter is a boon. He affects a race and folk are made 
better by him just as every horse has had improvement, 
the result of a century of breeding thoroughbreds for 
racing. Behold the locomotive engine in the day of its 
strength. The fire-box is its stomach, the boiler is its 



56 RICHARD CROKER. 

lungs. Its brains are that throttle-gripping engine- 
driver one notes peering from the cab. AVanting that 
stomach of furnace, and those steam-chest lungs, how- 
ever, your simple engineer, throttle he never so wisely, 
would not go far to perform those winged miracles of 
transportation to make up the daily time-card of com- 
merce. And thus it is with man. Therefore give to 
the poor gladiator place in your patience — give him the 
kind countenance of your good opinion. 

It is not well to change one's public into sheep. 
With wars in every region, the lesson is indelible that 
force — physical force — is still the last grand invoca- 
tion which summons Truth and Eight. While this 
confronts one, condemn not these fist-philosophers who 
do most of their small thinking with the brain which 
lies back of the ears. The race should have these 
promontories of the physical to hold a course by just 
as it should those other headlands of a best morality 
and a highest thought of which we sing so much in 
praise. 

It was long ago determined to make of this volume 
an unchecked thought-ramble into any worth-while 
field. On this subject of the prize fighter, and to the 
end that one gain a best understanding of these gentry 
of the ring, it would be good to converse with that once 
glove-master, John Lawrence Sullivan. Or it may do 
as well, perchance, and serve besides to keep those more 
timid aloof from rugged company, if I repeat a 
colloquy which fell out between this ring fighter and 
myself about a duo of years ago. I will put down 
all he said, for while but a part is in defense of the 
fighting clan, the relation of the rest may serve to dis- 
close some personal virtues of heart and head, justice 



DRINK AND GENIUS. 6V 

and a spirit of intelligence; and so teach ones ignorant 
on the point that even the despised fighting man may 
be capable of a right feeling and a right thinking which 
would not stain the vestments of a bishop. 

It was in the "■ Inferno," a drinking place, where I 
found our Sullivan. He was agreeably at a table with 
a cup of strong waters; taking, indeed, " his ease in his 
inn," as the big-girdled knight would say. 

It should not discourage the reader, however 
bleached to rarity his taste may be, to learn of Sulli- 
van's discovery in a taproom. The mighty seem never 
far from drink, and our ring monarch had glittering 
precedent for his surroundings. Had one sought 
Chaucer in his day, doubtless one would have found 
him at the " Tabard," marshaling his pilgrims for 
Canterbury. Or coming down the years, was there a 
word to say to that Will of Stratford, who is known of 
this day by his surname of Shakspere, where should the 
sagacious have searched? Why, forsooth! at the 
" Mermaid." There with pipe and bowl he would have 
been had in talk with Walter Raleigh; or belike with 
Fletcher and Wotten and Donne and those others who, 
with himself, were founders of that first literary club 
of England whereof Ealeigh himself was the corner 
stone; and which was two centuries after to become 
the model of that Gerrard Street coterie with Johnson 
as its hub, and about whom, like radiating spokes, were 
Reynolds, Langton, Burke, Goldsmith, and Topham 
Beauclerc. If one were seeking Ben Jonson, that 
dramatist and duelist would have been come upon soak- 
ing himself with sack at the " Devil," with Inigo Jones, 
his workmate of the masques and royal revels, the com- 
panion of his glass. Or was it on gossip Pepys one 



58 RICHARD CROKER. 

would call? And if he were not busy falsifying his ac- 
counts at the Admiralty, it is a shrewd chance one 
would meet with him at the " Cock "; or if not there, 
then stealing a suspicious visit with Mistress Knepp of 
the theater to the " Dog and Duck " at Finsbury. In a 
later year he who sought Defoe would have encountered 
him at " Garroway's "; while Dry den, if one would 
have had speech of him, one might have — as did 
Pope on that boyish occasion when he was first 
to meet that genius whom he afterwards was to 
imitate — " earthed " at " Will's." It was there 
the poet would be met withal, in that identical room 
of " Will's " from which Steele was soon to date his 
" Tatlers " and " Spectators "; and where, of Steele's 
fecund fancy, on the 2d of March, 1711, good Sir Koger 
De Coverley was to have birth — that quaint, benevolent 
old knight of Worcestershire, Avhom Addison was to 
adopt from Steele and love for his own. Pope in his 
day, with the unstability common of the born cripple, 
was in a dozen inn parlors during the course of the sun; 
one moment at " Button's " with Addison, the next at 
" White's " with Gay. Or one might hear of Pope at 
the " Cocoa Tree," where he'd gone Avhispering the 
Tories drinking, what was current as gossip among 
Buckhurst and Arbuthnot and IMontagu and Garth 
and SAvift and their stout fellow-AVhigs who found 
drink and discussion at the " Kit Kat." It was at the 
" Turk's Head " where Johnson mixed punch for Gold- 
smith; Avhere he bullied Garrick; and where he toadied 
to Topham I^eauclerc because of the latter's great 
grandsire Charles the Second, who, conjointty with Nell 
Gwynne, had furnished his brief ancestry its start. It 
was twenty-five years nearer us when one might have 



THE FIGHTER'S WISDOM. 59 

glimpsed the coarse, meaty features of Brummell as the 
beau gazed from the windows of " Brooks'," or found 
Fox losing thousands at " Watier's." In that hour, 
too, one would have met Nelson at " Fladong's " — if 
Lady Hamilton had not detained him; Wellington at 
" Slaughter's "; Avhile Coleridge, before those kindred 
vices of opium and Unitarianism had shaken him, was 
drinking thinly with Lamb at the "Salutation and 
Cat." Even the Cloth had its tap; and it was at " Ib- 
betson's " that our worthy archbishop, with a glass of 
Hollands before him, refused to sign a parliament peti- 
tion asking laws meant to muzzle the Briton in his gin- 
bibbing, and turned it aside with the epigram, "I'd 
sooner see Englishmen free than sober." Sullivan 
drinking in the " Inferno " had every celebrity of past 
time as his indorser. 

But to our conversation: Sullivan will from time to 
time repeat the questions offered; wherefore there's no 
call to interfere with aught of formal inquisitiveness. 
Also we'll let Sullivan talk in his dialect of Cherry 
Hill. To re-phrase him into English would be corrup- 
tion and a wrong. 

" What's the matter with the dramy? " repeated Sul- 
livan, in a voice foggy with the much steam of sultry 
old encounters; "well, I'll put you onto what's the mat- 
ter with the theaters. They need about two-foot of 
snow, see! Then these mugs couldn't go bicycling with 
their sweethearts, an' they'd turn into the show in- 
stead. Is the pop'Iar taste in theatricals changin'? 
String all the stuff you like on it that it's changin'. 
Shakspere right now aint a deuce in a bum deck. He 
was all right in his time, Shakspere was; but he's a has- 
been. A mug don't go to a theater any more to learn 



60 RICHARD CROKER. 

things; he goes to be entertained. That's where Shak- 
spere gets the gate, see! 

" What do I think of the Spanish War? Say! our 
victory at Santiago don't throw no wonder into me. 
Those Dagoes weren't in it with ns. I don't count 
guns an' battleships; at any rate they aint the whole 
box of tricks. It's the guy behind the gun that does 
it; an' that's where we can put out the best nation on 
the list. America's not. only got the ships, she's got 
the men; we've got the sand and we've got the 
punch. They can't beat us; never in a thousand 
years. 

" What do I think of the English? Not to give you 
a short answer, I aint got no use for an Englishman. 
They make me tired, the English do, with the lugs they 
put on. I know 'em all right, all right; I've been over 
there, an' know 'em like a card-sharp does an ace. 
They're too chesty, see! too much stuck on themselves. 
Buy the English at their figure, an' they'd break you. 
But they don't make good. Sure! they treated me 
0. K., at that. 

" Do I meet the Prince [he's been elevated to a King- 
ship since] when I'm in England? Dozens of times. 
I'd been over there a couple of months doin' my stunts 
at the theater, when one of his ' Royal Highness's' 
chasers comes sprintin' up to me, an' he says, ' John, 
the Prince wants to see you spar.' I looks at this guy 
a minute, an' says, ' Well, tell the sucker to pay his 
dough at the door an' look on. There's no strings on 
him; an' I aint sparrin' in secret. Any mug, if he's a 
prince or a costermonger, can see me box if he's got the 
price.' But later, the manager gives me the hunch it's 
a dead good scheme to go an' put up my hands for his 



TEE PRINCE WAS ALL RIGHT. 61 

* Koyal Highness ' in private. I'm a little sore about 
it, for I don't see where a prince comes in any more 
than any other duck; but I don't make much of a kick, 
an' tells them to lay out their game, an I'll be there 
with my sparring partner to do the rest. An' of course 
we pull off the e-vent. 

" What sort of a man is the Prince? Well, I'll tell 
you." At this point Sullivan was overswept with an air 
of deprecation, and spake as one who apologizes for 
confessed and obvious weakness. " Til tell you about 
the Prince. Of course he's an Englishman, an' a 
prince at that; but between you an' me, he's a pretty 
decent kind of a dub. And if he lives, he'll be a 
hot monarch. After I'd soaked Lannon for eight 
rounds, an' was pulling' off my gloves,— reg'lar pillows 
they were,— the Prince comes over an' shakes me by the 
mit, see! An' he does it like a square man. It caught 
me all right; a square man goes as far as he likes with 
me, every time. 

" How do I get sore on Mayor Quincy of Boston a 
year ago, when they talks of me jumpin' out for Mayor? 
Well, there's a blow-out in Fanyul Hall on account of 
this young fellow Ten Eyck, the oarsman, who's just 
come back from doin' up the English, see! Well, I'm 
there on the stage with the rest of the push, an' Quincy 
is presidin'. Every guy goes up an' shakes Quincy's 
mit, an' I'm farmer enough to get in. I go ag'inst 
Quincy an' extends me duke. He sees an openin' to 
make a little reputation off me, an' gives me the cold 
turn-down. Eefuses to shake hands with me; me bein' 
a prize fighter. It don't worry me none. I can re- 
member a time when a Mayor of Boston— an' a better 
man than any Quincy that ever beozed ice water— 



62 RICHARD CROEER. 

stands on that very stage an' presents me a champion's 
belt, while the gang howls. Quincy's bluff don't bother 
me a bit. I sits there an' hears the geezer make a 
speech a bit later; an' on the level! I'm sorry for the 
sucker. I'm sorry for Boston havin' such a" dead one 
for its mayor. As I listens to the duck, I couldn't help 
thinkin', ' Well, if I was as big a duffer with my hands 
as you are with your head, you'd never turn me down 
for bein' a prize fighter.' 

" Am I a Democrat? Nit, I aint nothin'; I vote for 
the man, see! If he's a good man, he goes with me. 
I was stuck on that young fellow Bryan, though; he 
made a dead game battle. I think if he'd side-stepped 
Silver an' gone in an' soaked it to the Trusts, he'd have 
landed the trick at that. 

" But I'll tell you one thing about politics. Folks 
better take a tumble to their game, or they'll get it 
where the baby wore the beads. Did you see a while 
back about the deputy sheriffs in the Pennsylvania 
coal mines, croakin' those strikin' miners who was 
marchin along the road? Did you catch onto where 
the judge lets the killers go with six thousand dollar 
bonds? Say! that won't do. If it had been the miners 
croakin' the mine-owners, would the judge have took 
bail? Not on your life! The poor suckers would have 
swung for it. That's the sort of racket that's goin' to 
send things keel-up in this country some day. You 
won't see it, an' I won't see it; but the time '11 come 
when it '11 be a dead case of ' Katie, bar the door,' an' 
there'll be somethin' doin' that '11 scare the hair off the 
top of the head of every lobster that's got a million 
dollars. 

" Prize fightin'? If it's pulled off on the square it's 



SULLIVAN'S GOOD EXAMPLE. 63 

a good thing. But there's a bunch of crooks and 
double-crossers who've got hold of the game an' queered 
it. No, I think a prize fighter aint so bad. It takes 
all sorts to make a world. We can't all be priests an' 
preachers an' make a livin' scoldin' the devil. Priests 
an' preachers are all right, an' I would be the first to 
call down a duck who made a crack the other way. 
But say! they aint got all the good to themselves. I've 
cut up rough at times, an' done a lot of things I wish 
I'd missed; but I've done plenty of good. I'll bet my 
life there's thousands of strong, husky young fellows 
who by seein' me fight got stuck on boxing; an' they 
quit bottles an' all-night sprees an' the rest of the 
funny business so they could hold up their hands like 
winners. If it hadn't been for seein' me, they wouldn't 
have half the health they've got. There would have 
been a bunch of them in Greenwood or Bloomingdale, 
too. No, I aint tryin' to cop a sneak on any particular 
credit for this; I simply say that there's a kind of good 
example that prize fighters set that a preacher or a mer- 
chant or a lawyer or a banker aint framed up to offer, 
see! " 

At this juncture a forlorn-appearing mortal, timidly 
obsequious, sidled up. 

" How do you do, Mr. Sullivan! " said the abject 
one in tones of flattery. 

" G'wan! " commanded Sullivan, harsh with sus- 
picion. " You don't know me. You're stallin' for a 
drink." 

" You would remember me," said tlie other with a 
cringe, " only you've forgot. I was standin' right be 
the ropes when you bested Paddy Eyan." 

" Poor Paddy! " observed Sullivan, with hoarse sym- 



64 IttCHARD CROKEB. 

pathy; "he was a good-hearted fellow, Paddy was; as 
good as ever was made. But he got the wrong steer 
when he come into the prize ring. He was no more a 
prize fighter than I am a milliner. I punched him out 
in the ninth. Here, bar-boy, give this gazabo," mean- 
ing the abject one, " a big drink an' a good cigar. 
There," Sullivan continued to the beneficiary, follow- 
ing the refreshment, "now don't give me any more 
guff. You've got a drink an' a smoke; that's what you 
wanted. So screw out now an' give me a rest. 

" It's a dead wonder," observed the huge ex- 
champion, as the abject one withdrew, visibly bright- 
ened by the drink; " it's a wonder he didn't strike me 
for ' twenty ' to help put a tombstone over Jack Demp- 
sey. I'll gamble that I've coughed up five thousand 
dollars in all — of course I'm lushin' at the time — to a 
lot of bunks who gives me a song an' dance about a 
tombstone for Dempsey. I'd dig for a ' twenty ' or a 
' fifty ' every time one of those Hungry Joes comes near 
me. Take me when I'm tankin' up, an' I'm that easy 
a baby could sell me a gold brick." 

It was now that the sporting writer of a local 
paper appeared. He asked Sullivan's opinion as to the 
probable winner of a combat between two welter 
weights who were to battle the next night. 

" You want to know who I pick to win, eh? " growled 
Sullivan; " well, I don't pick, see! If there's one thing 
that makes a game young fellow who's matched to fight, 
an' is out to put up the scrap of his life, dead sore, it's 
to have a lot of wise mugs settin' round ' prophesyin' ' 
that he's goin' to lose, an' is up ag'inst it. I aint in 
that business. All I've got to say to these young men 
is to go in an' do their best. They should remember 



THE NORSE RACE. 65 

that, while pain soon passes away, defeat never does; 
an' fight as long as they can see or stand. 

"You're goin', are you?" concluded Sullivan, turn- 
ing to me. '•' Come 'round an' let me get my lamps on 
you often. If you're goin' to print what I've said, you 
can put it in with my compliments that I think an 
honest prize fighter is a better man than a dishonest 
banker. It's not a guy's trade, but what he is, that 
makes him a good or a bad proposition." 

There you have been face to face with the fighting 
man. Doffing prejudice, it will not tax a discernment 
which I know to be yours, to discover in his slang- 
garnished utterances a list of virtues which the world is 
taught to applaud. Look closely; one will find therein 
expressed a courage, a patriotism, a vanity of country, 
a charity, a loyalty to friends, an admiration for a foe, 
a memory of the dead, a care for another's sensibilities, 
some shreds of a fair philosophy, dramatic and other- 
wise; and lastly, that stubborn personal independence 
not to be impressed by a prince born in the purple, 
which many an American with more pretense of re- 
spectability than ever a poor prize fighter might make, 
would save his self-respect if, during the progress of 
some London invasion, he were to emulate and adopt. 

To you who, reading this, are ruffled of a spirit to be 
put thus talk to talk with a drinking gladiator, I pro- 
fess an exhortation to remember that race from which 
you come, and be appeased. Back-track your people 
to the spring-head of their emanation. They are to be 
known through every whirl of history by their blue- 
gray eyes and tawny hair. It is the robber race; the 
wolf race. It drifts westward on its lines of latitude; 
drifts ever westward, as if the world in its rolling to 



66 RTCHARD CROKER. 

the east offers that impulse which gives it motion and 
direction. It is the race of pillage; the race which 
shoved ocean-ward in its long sea-serpents on viking 
cruise, and whose axes in the name of loot have bat- 
tered even at the gates of Paris long ago. Its cry of 
war, hoarse with courage, the loud Ahoy! now dwindled 
to be the hailing cry of sailor-folk, was through cen- 
turies the courier of conquest. It is the race of liberty; 
and from it we take our elections and our legislatures, 
which find their gagless patterns in the Things and 
Witenagemotes of Norway. It is the race of justice; 
and had its system of jury, and trial by a man's own 
peers, a thousand years e'er Eunnymede was heard of 
and Magna Charta gave those safeguards guarantee. 

It is the brave and quenchless race; the race of that 
chief who said: " If I'm opposed by Odin, I will strive 
with Odin; if Thor confronts me, I will fight with Thor. 
I have no fear save the fear of the cow's death — the 
bed-death — the death in peace and straw. I've no hope 
but to die the man's death, girt with the joys of battle; 
and where shields are breaking, and axes are crashing, 
and swords are smiting in the blessed front of war. 
Thus shall my spirit win Valhalla, and feast at the 
board and drink of the cup of those heroes who have 
gone before." 

Skalds were its singers, and its sagas told the 
glory of this race. It is a stern race, and in its wars 
staked blood and life against those riches of its adversa- 
ries for which it fought. It could conquer or it could 
die, and the iron ethics of its war-game taught that 
losers lose all. Had this race been with Brennus when 
the Romans complained of his overheavy weights while 
telling down their yellow ransom; had it borne \dtness 



THE REARWARD LOOK. 67 

as the conqueror in hard retort, unbuckling his belt, 
cast sword and all upon the scales in cruel addition to 
the price already made, crying, "Woe to the van- 
quished!" it would have approved that relentless 
proverb, and indorsed this jurisprudence of the strong 
hand, with a happy clangor of its shields. 

That, reader, is your race as it stands in the twilights 
of furthest histor}- that is your race to-day. So shall 
one learn who digs beneath the vain veneer which over- 
spreads us of conventionality and civilization. Is it 
then strange, and a criminal thing, that some blossom 
of this race of violence should be the modern boxer? 

But one frets too much and with too little reason. 
Belie ourselves as we will, still are we saved by that 
latent savagery which dwells stiffly within our breasts, 
defending and keeping its own. And still do we find 
fame for our fist heroes. What are the names of a 
century, or two centuries ago, to live on the lips of the 
present? With the Bettertons, the Booths, the Mack- 
lins, the Garricks, and the Spranger Barrys of the 
theaters; with the Buckinghams, the Rochesters, the 
De Grammonts, the Herveys, and the Bubb Doding- 
tons of the courts; with the Clarendons, the Robert 
Walpoles, the Butes, and the Peels of statescraft; with 
the Pitts, the Burkes, the Foxes, and the Townsends of 
legislation; with the Fords, the Wycherleys, the Van- 
brughs, the Farquhars, the Gibbers, and the Sheri- 
dans of the drama; with the Fieldings, the Smolletts, 
the Richardsons, the Burneys, and the Peacocks of 
literature; with the Youngs, the Shenstones, the Chat- 
tertons, the Grays, and the Cowpers of the poets; with 
the Georges who were kings; with the Eugenes and the 
Marlboroughs who were soldiers; with the Blakes and 



68 RICHARD CROKER. 

the Rodneys who were sailors; with the Nashes, the 
Davies, the Alvanleys, and the Brummells who were 
beaux, and therefore nothings; with all these, plucked 
as they are from every garden of celebration, will go the 
names of the Figgs, the Broughtons, the Jacksons, the 
Belchers, the Humphries, and the Mendozas of the 
boxers. Despise them if you will; the last will live 
while the others live, and those exhaustless lamps of 
immortality will burn with equal oil for all. 



VI. 



SOME SMALL CHANGE. 



Some time a good fellow thou hast been 

And sparedst not thy gold and fee ; 
Therefore He lend the forty pence, 

And other forty if need bee. 

— The Heir of Linne. 

It has long been a thought in my mind, and one 
nourished by what I have read, that the best sketch of 
a life would ever be Boswellian. The author may tell 
more of his man in one small characteristic anecdote 
not to hold two hundred words, than would be possible 
by any direct assertion of attribute, though he extended 
it to be two thousand. 

It is a world's humor to laugh at poor Boswell. 
The latter failed of that respect, which might else have 
been his defense, because he showed himself so plainly 
spoil and quarry to an abject hero-worship of his gruff 
and bullying favorite. Yet to-day the oracular John- 
son is almost wholly known by Boswell's story of his 
life. One thousand folk read the little Scotchman's 
six-volume tale of Johnson, before one is found to turn 
the pages of the "Rambler," or the "Lives of the 
Poets," or whatever else was the pen-output of our un- 
kempt King-worshiping, American-hating, Thrale- 
sponging, toad-devouring, boot-licking, tuft-hunting 
nobility-stricken lackey of a lexicographer. How 
thoroughly do we infer the sickening snobbery of John- 
son when Boswell tells us of an hour— three o'clock of 



^0 RICHARD CROKER. 

the morning — when Beaiiclerc and Bennet Langton, 
both of the aristocracy, and the first of the purple 
blood of Charles the Second, and who was subsequently 
to prove his descent from that merry monarch by the 
seduction of Bolingbroke's wife, arouse the philosopher 
by a merciless banging on his door; and how the 
irate Johnson, cured to all smiles the moment he dis- 
cerns the bon-ton character of the disturbers, gleefully 
huddles on his snuffy old clothes, and joins the two in 
their drinking spree. The}^ — the three — have a hilari- 
ous time among the hucksters of Covent Garden 
Market, and Beauclerc and Johnson continue to be 
deeply drunk throughout the next two days. 

Garrick, when he heard of it, shook his head with a 
pretended affectionate alarm, and, remarking on the 
steep suddenness of Johnson's appearance in his new 
role of a roystering, watch-beating bullyboy, said: "I 
see how it will be. I shall yet have to bail my old 
friend out of the Kound House." 

Truly, the Boswell style, albeit not at all times 
and in every case a possibility, is, whenever it may 
be resorted to, the best style. And because it be 
so, it is in my thoughts, now that we have Richard 
Croker at the age of twenty, and full-standing on the 
confines of that region of politics wherein he has so 
wrought and waxed and grown distinguished, to lapse 
into a list of small tales which are to concern him, and 
in the relation whereof he is to more or less move about 
and expose to the reader such glimpses of his nature 
as may serve the half-fair mind to some correct picture 
of the man himself. The above will afford explana- 
tion of what, for a chapter or two, is to be a direct de- 
parture from plans pursued so far. Therefore, with no 



BOSWELLIAN STUDIES. 1\ 

more of prelude, let us tune ourselves to a Boswellian 
strain. 

When one is brought to sketch him who, like Richard 
Croker, lives in a midwhirl of every activity of poli- 
tics, and put in type his attributes and characteristics, 
whether inherent or acquired, one should call to one's 
side some spirit of conservatism. For if one be of 
that man's party, and, as it may be, more or less his 
friend, one is prone to overrun the hunt — overstate 
those matters which go to the subject's grace; equally, 
on the other hand, if one be of an opposition, and per- 
chance adds to a difference of politics some feud, per- 
sonal or otherwise, one would have natural, and it 
might be unconscious, inducements to note only the 
wrong side — remember naught save those imperfec- 
tions to which everyone is heir. Also, what is above 
stated of him who writes might with equal cogency be 
said of him who reads. 

Richard Croker is broad and thick and strong in per- 
son; short and dark as a December day. He is fortu- 
nate in an abundance of brains, as his seven and three- 
eighths hat might testify. His hair has been brave; it is 
all at its post, guarding against baldness. Gray, almost 
to whiteness, it tells plainly of those fifty-eight years 
he has witnessed. There is naught of ferocity nor 
grimness to Croker. His gray eyes are kindly and sym- 
pathetic, while the lower face is framed and softened 
by a full beard and mustache, clipped like a garden 
hedge, and which, once dark, wears like his hair the 
frosts of time and care. Croker dresses himself well, 
and in the mode; he is as apt to lapse into evening 
dress with the disappearance of the sun as any 
exquisite. All in all, be it day or evening, he presents 



72 RICHARD CROKER. 

a pleasant, handsome figure, and one marked as distin- 
guished even to the stranger eye. His imposing virtue 
is courage. His lower jaw, broad, firm, strong as a 
bear-trap, bears plain, true testimony of this to the 
face reader. 

Proceeding in a fashion at once heedless and un- 
sequent, this story concerning Eichard Croker might 
be told. His attention was called to the large number 
of men, once strong in Democratic politics, who had 
been cast over, and were outside the party breastworks. 

" They may combine and make you trouble," said the 
gentleman who was discussing the matter with Croker. 
The latter shook his head in confident negative. 

" They can't combine," he replied; " they're dis- 
honest, and they can't combine. No combination can 
be made where all are dishonest and each one knows 
it. The first element of leadership," he continued, " is 
honesty — perfect honesty. The honest man will pre- 
vail. Because other men can trust him. A rascal 
can trust an honest man; and a rascal can't trust 
a rascal. You might take one hundred men, ten of 
them honest and ninety of them false, and put them 
away on an island. Come back in two months, and, 
for the reasons I've given you, you'll find the ten 
honest men dominating the rest." 

One may derive the fact of a man's power and per- 
sonal force. Just as the astronomers discovered the ex- 
istence of Neptune and Uranus before a telescope had 
been developed by which these planets were brought 
within the radius of observations. The cunning 
astronomer knew of the existence, and as well the size, 
of these by the way their comrade planets acted. 
Croker's strength might be come to in the same way. 



THE "MACHINE'S" DEFENSE. 73 

His mild manner, his soft voice, the quiet atmosphere, 
might breed a doubt were it not for the attitude of 
the thirty-five Tammany " leaders " who belt him 
about. 

There are ninety thousand folk on the roster of 
Tammany Hall, each with a vote, and each with a 
thirst for place. From these ninety thousand come 
the " leaders "; not so much by consent, as by con- 
quest of the suffrages expressed at primaries of the 
said ninety thousand. These " leaders," chiefs of their 
clans, brave, quick of thought, decisive as a guillotine, 
are the very heart of force. And yet these " leaders," 
bowing to none besides, yield to Croker as willows to 
the wind. From their movements, one might know of 
the magnitude of Croker, even it were not discernible 
of the man himself. 

Croker is the chief of the chiefs. This eminence 
has come to him not by gift, but as prize to powers 
native of himself. It is his because of a first courage 
and valor and skill on the battlefields of politics. 
In those old Norse days it was no fullness of riches nor 
of family which chose a leader; it was deeds. And 
when the rough sea-soldiery of Norway found one who 
rose loftier than the others by dint of strength in war, 
they made a platform of their locked shields, and lift- 
ing him high above their heads proclaimed him 
" chief." In similar fashion did Croker attain his 
leadership. 

Eichard Croker is a firm apostle of organized politics. 
He believes in the " machine," and was reared at the 
knee of that theory. One day he spoke to me on this 
point. " Every successful enterprise," he said, " must 
have organization and a head, Everything which sue- 



74 EICHARD CROKER. 

ceeds musi jnd does have organization; without it all 
things fall to pieces. Be it a store, or an army, or a 
church, or a party in politics, it must have organiza- 
tion and a head. If I'm a ' boss,' then a merchant, a 
bishop, or a general is a ' boss '; and a president is the 
big ' boss ' of all." 

Perhaps the first impression one gets of Richard 
Croker is that of guilelessness. He looks as though 
one might with ordinary effort deceive and destroy 
him. This notion is error, grievous and complete; he 
is very wise; and a fox is as a fool to him. Still his 
plan primarily is to trust every man. He explains it in 
this way. 

" I make it a point to trust all men once — trust them 
with my eyes shut. And the scheme has its success. 
Nine men of ten are honest, and will loyally respond to 
their obligations. The tenth may be false and cheat. 
But at that, I am right nine times to be in error once. 
If a man prove false, I never trust him again." 

Children and animals are folk of an affectionate, 
warm interest to Eichard Croker. One may be walk- 
ing and talking on some subject of interest with him. 
Should the two meet some nursling of three or four 
years' standing, Croker loses sight for the time 
of the topic under discussion. He neither hears nor 
cares. His whole thought is on the child. He will 
stoop down until his face is on a level with the little 
face that has stopped him. He and the infant will beam 
on each other for the space, perhaps, of three minutes. 
The converse is wordless, and of the eyes. However, 
they must say much that is loving and pleasant to one 
another, for each breaks off the interview and goes his 
several way with the best of thoughts touching his new 



WHAT IS A GREAT MAN? 75 

acquaintance. " That's a good baby," Croker will say 
thoughtfully, as he resumes his walk, and as if he con- 
versed with himself; '*' that's a good baby." Then, with 
a half laugh, as one who comes back from the beau- 
tiful to the harder, sterner claims of life, he will re- 
sume the broken conversation. 

It was said above that Richard Croker loved ani- 
mals. His delight in a horse is without a boundary. 
It is probable, however, that his best affections are 
given to the bulldog. Croker was in hap-hazard con- 
versation moved to an expression of the high esteem in 
which he holds that kindly, yet resolute, animal. The 
talk ran thus: 

" What do you call a great man? " asked Croker of 
his friend. 

" It's difficult to define a great man," replied the 
other, "but I might give you an example. For in- 
stance, while I've no great love for him, there are those 
who say that McKinley is a great man." 

" I don't think so," retorted Croker. " I'm told he'll 
desert his principles and his friends." 

" That's scarcely an argument against greatness, 
however," replied the other. " An evasion of prin- 
ciple, and a desertion of friends, are frequent earmarks 
of greatness. There are many who must do both to 
become great." 

" It's not my idea of greatness," said Croker. " The 
man I call great is the man who, win or lose, fights and 
falls by his standard — who never gives up his cause nor 
his friend. The great man is he who never falters nor 
flies — never lets go." 

" By that argument, you might call a bulldog a great 



76 RICHARD CROKER. 

" Let me tell you one thing," retorted Croker, with 
an unusual flash; " if a bulldog were a man he'd be a 
great man. He's kindly, loyal, brave; and when he 
fights, as all on earth, man or dog, or what you will, 
must fight, he fights to win or die. He will come ofE 
victor, or he will die where he stands. Yes, indeed; if 
a bulldog were a man, he'd be a great man." 

This was at dinner. Fish appeared and Croker 
turned thoughtfully to its dispatch, his face disclosing 
plainly that the man and the bulldog were still gaining 
comparison in his mind, measurably to the disadvan- 
tage of the man. 

There is a deep strain of religion in Richard Croker, 
and while he might miss a political convention, he will 
not miss the Sunday service of his church. The sales- 
man of a bookseller once said with an air of half 
astonishment, " Croker came in to-day and bought a 
large consignment of books. What do you think they 
were? " 

" Couldn't say," replied the listener; " horse books, 
perhaps, or books on dogs or field sports." 

" No," responded the literature salesman, " every 
one of them was a religious book." 

If some master of politics and men were to glance 
along New York, he would in the last conclusion de- 
cide that Richard Croker was civilly the best restrain- 
ing influence. Among those about him, as well as 
among those about the chiefs of the opposition, a sharp 
search would find ones who, with the least of opening 
or opportunity, would plunder the public of its every 
dollar. It arises chiefly from the fact that our " best 
citizens " do nothing to assert themselves in prac- 
tical politics, save growl as they cast their ballots 



TAMMANY TEMPERANCE. 11 

and grumble as they pay their taxes. The desperado 
of politics acts otherwise; he joins some party; he 
crowds to the front; he shouts; he seeks office; he grabs 
what he may, and never permits a question of public 
morality to get between the legs of his desires and trip 
them up. There are blacklegs in politics, as, for that 
matter, there are blacklegs in banks. There is this, 
however, to be said of the Tammany blackleg; the man 
he most fears, and the last to whom he is willing to 
discover his villainies, is Richard Croker. 

Said a gentleman, commenting on this: "If I were 
business manager of the city of New York, my first and 
anxious care would be to appoint a commission of 
doctors to look after Croker's health. Were he to die, 
I verily believe the politicians — Democratic, Eepubli- 
can, and Mugwump — would steal everything but the 
back fence." 

There is much of native purity in the make-up of 
Richard Croker. Naturally he is fine and overstrung. 
Men drunken, loud profanity, obstreperous boasting, or 
a vulgar story, or one with a Rabelaisian finish, evokes 
his disgust on the instant. Nervous as a running 
horse, such things are to him a discord of morals — as 
if one struck a harp with a hammer. 

Croker never drinks strong waters and has a dread 
of drunken men. This fact has led to curious, not to 
say sober, results. The men of Tammany not alone 
obey, they imitate their great war chief. And thus it 
falls that there is scant drinking among the whelps of 
the Tiger. The club, to which Croker is as the soul, 
with a membership of thirty-five hundred, doesn't, man 
for man, consume one-tenth as much strong drink as 
does any of the four large social clubs of the town. 



18 RICHARD CROEER. 

Drinking is decidedly without vogue in Tammany 
upper circles, and all through the sober example of 
Kichard Croker. 

There is an anecdote apropos of Croker's feeling on 
this point of drink. A wine merchant, distinguished 
for an eagerness to do business, approached Croker. 
There was a gentleman in converse with the latter at 
the time. 

" It's a mere matter of business," quoth the earnest 
man of wines, " and, as it's no secret, I had as soon state 
it before our friend here as not. This is the proposi- 
tion: No one wants you to actively engage yourself in 
the trade; but if you'll give me permission to use your 
name as an agent for our wines, we'll pay you thirty- 
five thousand dollars a year." 

" I couldn't do that," replied Croker, while his brow 
clouded. " I don't drink myself, and wouldn't for 
what money you could name be the cause of leading 
other men to drink — certainly not young men. I want 
to see men free to do as they please; about drink as well 
as every proper thing. But I couldn't lend my name 
to what you ask." 

This was said in that quiet tone characteristic of 
Croker, and which makes one feel its unchangeability 
as if one were dealing with the eternal rock. The mo- 
ment, however, that Croker had disposed of the pro- 
posal in so far as it pressed upon himself, the instinct 
of suggestion arose. 

"Why don't you get 'Smiling' John Kelly?" said 
Croker. " He's always going about among folk. 
Everybody likes him; he drinks wine, and would be the 
best man you could get." 

" I'd take him in a moment," said the wine merchant. 



''SMILING" JOHN KELLY. 79 

" Suppose you speak to him about it. I'll give him 
fifteen thousand a year." 

It was about ten o'clock that night when " Smiling 
John " entered the club like a left-over ray of sunshine. 

" John," said Croker with a smile, for he felt the 
humor of it, " John, I've got a place for you." 

" Have you? " said " Smiling John," with a cheerful 
air — he had refused more than one of the city's highest 
offices — "have you. Chief? What do I do, and what 
do I get? " 

" You don't do anything," replied Croker. " You 
go about meeting people; you have a glass of wine and 
a good word with them, just as you do now. As for 
what you get, John — you get fifteen thousand dollars a 
year." 

" You'll have to be clearer than that," replied " Smil- 
ing John," his countenance aglow with a usual be- 
nign philanthropy; " who is it that wants me? " 

" It's Gentile, the wine man," replied Croker. " He 
wants you to sell his wine." 

" He does, does he? " said " Smiling John," in tones 
of pleasant scorn; "we'll settle that easily. Tell him 
I'd rather buy it." 

There are two systems adopted by or native to poli- 
ticians which are more easily described than declared. 
AVilliam Jennings Bryan, not long since running for 
high office, would stand exponent of one; while Richard 
Croker is a leading expression of the other. Bryan 
with offices to bestow, or favors of place to give, would 
settle a long, rich list of them on those who were his 
foes. Croker, going naturally to the other system, 
would give all he had to friends and party followers. 
The thought of each, in one of its phases, would be 



80 RICHARD CROKER. 

political, and born of an anxiety to draw strength to his 
banner. The first would argue that his friends, reward 
or no reward, would remain his friends; while with 
place he might buy an enemy, and so augment his 
power while depleting opposition. Croker, with less 
coldness and more of the warm, red blood of gratitude, 
would enrich his friends and scowl defiance at his foes. 
And yet he, too, would be moved of a battle-logic to 
that same thought which the other, dominated of a 
peace policy, entertained. The latter, as stated, would 
with office and present of place turn an enemy into a 
friend, and so add to his power. Croker would give all 
to his adherents, and thereby teach his enemy looking 
on that it was good to be his friend, to the end 
of so turning said enemy that in the next collision he 
would be found beneath the Croker flag, a paragon of 
daring energy in its defense. The Croker system is 
the better system; it would last centuries while the 
other, more cold and more calculating, wouldn't last 
years. 

Kichard Croker is a devout follower of the spoils 
system. He believes with the dead Senator Marcy of 
this State, who, in the debates during the thirties over 
the confirmation of Jackson's appointment of Van 
Buren to be Minister to England, said: "The Demo- 
crats of New York when they meet defeat expect to 
step down and out. When they succeed, they look to 
enjoy the fruits of their triumph. They see no harm 
in the aphorism that to the victors belong the spoils of 
the enemy." 

However, this flowing chapter has overflowed its 
banks. One story more and we will close and go to 
the next. There was at dinner with Richard Croker 



ONE MUST FORGIVE. 81 

one who, in cold and plotting blood, had done his best 
or worst to pile a mountain of injury on the Croker 
head. Later in the evening, a friend wondered sav- 
agely at Croker for his toleration: 

" Here you are," said the friend, " in the very noon 
of power. Here is he who conspired to do you the 
greatest wrong one man may do another. With the 
falsest of charges, at which he himself connived, he 
aimed at your liberty and life. Nor was it his fault he 
failed. Now that you have him in your hand to crush, 
you let him go — you dine with him in all apparent 
friendship." 

" What you say is true," replied Croker, with an 
air whereof the major part was sorrow; " what you say 
is true. But there's one thing you don't know. That 
man came to me and told me he was wrong, and asked 
me to forgive him. When a man does that, no matter 
what he's attempted against me, I've got to forgive 
him." 



VII. 

A CHARACTER STUDY. 

The captain said as ladies writhed their neck, 
To see the dying dolphin flap the deck : 
" If we go down, on us these gentry sup, 
We dine upon them if we haul them up ; 
Wise men applaud us when we eat the eater. 
As devils laugh when keen men cheat the cheater." 
— The Sea Voyage. 

While I am engaged with the collection on my 
pencil's point of a list of anecdotes of Richard Croker, 
intending to string them on the thread of narrative as 
a child strings heads, and all to show the mental make- 
up and as well the methods of the man. a visitor 
arrives. The latter, discovering my task, offers as 
query to be answered: "How does one account for 
Croker's success? What would be that analysis, to lay 
out each by itself those elements within him which, 
combined, give him his command ? " 

Reply to this is no task trivial. That man who can 
make a right one could go to the cradles of his day and 
point out a future's champions. There is nothing so 
successful as success. One sees it, appreciates it, knows 
that victory exists. Yet, whether the success in hand 
be the success of a man, or an idea, or an army, it is 
ever difficult of display, either in its seed or source or 
that argument of growth which bore it as its fruit. 

Croker dominates almost four millions of folk; his 
power is hard to overstate; to say it is Czar-like is to 

82 



THREE STRATA OF FOLK. 83 

shear it of frontier and tell but a part of the story. 
And he has continued himself thus in the conning 
tower of control for nearly sixteen years; and that, in 
the face of constant and mighty strivings, within as 
well as without, to evict him. How does he do this? 
What are those inner things called attributes which 
give him and protect him in this supremacy? As I've 
stated, it's something more than hard, it's impossible, 
to tell; and he who makes essay of the task will garner 
error as rustics garner corn. 

Eichard Croker was, for one thing, fortunate of his 
birth. He comes, as do ninety per cent, of mankind, 
and may Heaven be thanked for it! from that great 
safe, hale, valid middle class who must work to live, 
and who construct the moral solvency of time. There 
are here, as there are everywhere, three great strata 
of folk. There is the upper or stratum of the aristoc- 
racy; the middle stratum of which I speak above; and 
that stratum to blackly be the base. Of these strata 
the upper is born assured behind the barriers of ac- 
cumulated money; the lowest comes and dwells without 
the barriers of possible accumulation. The one lives 
without apprehension of need; the other without ex- 
pectation of betterment. One, per consequence, is 
without fear, and the other without hope; and both are 
thereby idle, both desperate, and both vicious. 

" We are bom evil," says Machiavelli, " and become 
good only by necessity." 

This pressure — moral — counted on by the Florentine 
doesn't, in the two classes under contemplation, exist; 
therefore, save for what threat the law may make, — and 
that is ever too slight to manage either the mental or 
the moral side of men, — being born evil, they continue 



84 RICHARD CROKER. 

evil to the end. Some homely simile for humanity in 
the mass might be found in any bubbling kettle of soup. 
At the top, the froth; at the bottom, the dregs; while 
that which boils between is all that is palatable, health- 
ful, and worth an honest spoon. It is the middle class, 
the class of effort, made strong and clean by the pres- 
sure of a very contest to live, which has been in all 
times the hope and stay of races. 

Every name worth ink for its embalming comes from 
the middle stratum. True! one hears of your kings 
and royal princes who are declared great by history. 
But were Truth to pry among the facts, how would de- 
cision go? Is it a Black Prince to capture a King of 
France at Poitiers? You will find a Chandos ever at 
his princely elbow; and who, holding him in military 
leading strings from first to last,' tells him when to ad- 
vance, and when to pause, and in all things what to do. 
It is an Audley Avho was declared the bravest and most 
valorous knight at Poitiers, and the Black Prince gave 
him weighty reward for it. And yet that Audley was 
so sure as to where true praise belonged, that the next 
day, as he lay with his wounds, he quartered the royal 
largesse among his four squires. Button of Button, 
Belves of Boddington, Fowlechurst of Crew, and 
Hawkestone of Wainehill, with the observe to those 
whom he had called to witness the donative: " You see 
here these four squires. What glory I may have gained 
has been through their means, and by their valor; on 
which account I give and resign to them the gifts which 
my lord the Prince has been pleased to bestow on me." 
It may be urged that Chandos, Audley, and the latter's 
four squires were not at all of the middle class, and of 
the aristocracy. That in halfway is true; but only of 



THE MIDDLE CLASSES. 86 

their day. Their style did not leave them without the 
need of effort, and at their trade of war they were 
bound to toil, or go wanting. 

This story of Poitiers points sundry morals. Edward 
the Black Prince is the putative hero of that battle, 
without shadow of true claim for his support. Also, 
he is pedestaled as the military figure of his century, 
when such mere captains of banditti as Hawkwood, 
Calverly, and Knolles, all Edward's soldiers at one and 
another time, demonstrate themselves by their achieve- 
ments of rapine, which range from the Northern oceans 
to the Mediterranean, and include the taking of cities, 
and even the capture and ransom of a Pope, to be his 
easy and complete superiors. One should not trust 
history when it tells of a prince. 

Or is it in a field of mental action a king is to brightly 
glance? Investigation will show that he burns like 
the moon by the reflected light of some sun of com- 
monalty. Is it some Henry who is to defy a Rome and 
reorganize a church? One will ever find a Duns 
Scotus, a Wickliffe, an Occam, and a Luther, to precede 
him or live in his day, to plant that vine of wliich he has 
the vintage. No; turn what page of the past one will, or 
read the present as it runs before one's eyes, it will bear 
note that the very uppermost and the very lowest 
classes are deserts to produce nothing of moment nor 
of might; and that it is the strong, deep soil of the 
middle class wherefrom the oaks of tallest greatness 
always spring. And, as set forth, Croker starts with 
that birth-advantage of rise in the middle class. 

That mere origin of middle class is not, however, to 
guarantee any certainty of a topmost success. Many 
thousands have owned it; and while they could boast 



66 mCBARD CROKER. 

on their deathbeds that they had lived with respect and 
paid their debts, these feats, while indubitably ones of 
magnitude and heroic worth, are withal too frequent 
of performance to earn a name as great, where 
the soul of the latter epithet depends for its existence 
on the unusual, on a poverty of occurrence. One 
must go further who attempts to expound the year-in 
and year-out victory of Eichard Croker. 

Perhaps one may come to some plainness in the busi- 
ness on new and other pathways of conjecture. 
Machiavelli writes, " I have many times considered 
with myself that the occasion of any man's good or bad 
fortune consists in his correspondence and accommo- 
dation with his times." Our philosopher then proceeds 
to disclose that in a Roman day when Hannibal was at 
top bent of success, it needed caution and care and an 
utmost discreet employment of exQvy Roman power to 
check the African's advance and bring him to a stand. 
This slow and steady caution Fabius possessed, and its 
successful use against Hannibal made Fabius the 
greatest name in Rome. 

But Fabius could be nothing but cautious. The re- 
quirements of the times took unto themselves mutation. 
Hannibal, withheld from Rome, must be made to re- 
turn to Carthage. Scipio, who was aggressive, said: 
"Invade Africa; assail Carthage." Fabius, the cau- 
tious, was not equal to anything other than defense. 
Fabius opposed the plan of Scipio. But the popular 
thought, which was with the careful Fabius when close 
peril waved sword above its head, having gotten breath 
and courage with the safety which Fabius had won, 
turned to follow and sustain the headlong Scipio. 
Fabius saw decline and Scipio rose above him, to be- 



CAUTION WEDS DARING. 87 

come the hero and the leader in his stead. Fabius 
was fitted to his times in the first instance and had 
renown; in the last, albeit he had in no whit changed, 
Fabius was out of line with his day, and so lost to 
Scipio, who joined the new times to a hair, the honors 
he had gathered. 

'Eichard Croker might be regarded as a composite 
of both Fabius and Scipio; he weds caution to daring 
in an extreme degree of each. He can dissemble like a 
Talleyrand; or he can be as bluff and blunt as any Henry 
the Eighth. He can follow policy and intrigue like a 
Louis the Eleventh; or he can charge as recklessly as 
any Bull of Burgundy — think in the saddle, and carry 
decision on the point of his sword. 

This thought of matching your times, expressed by 
the Italian, had a partial assertion by the late Voorhees 
of Indiana. He was reminded of having given, the 
session before, utterance to deduction and statement 
which went to the contradiction of his that day's 
Senate speech. 

" Yes, it is quite possible," observed Voorhees in 
reply, and he had the air of one who consents to a 
weary truth; " it is quite possible that I do not talk 
now as I talked then. But times change and de- 
mands change with them. You should remember that 
statesmanship is simply the science of circumstance." 

What the tall orator said would have been evenly 
true had he changed a word and made it: " Leadership 
is the science of circumstance." 

■^sop, the fabulist and slave, didn't believe with 
Machiavelli, and was taught painfully his error. It 
is ^sop's excuse, perhaps, that he lived two thousand 
years before the other^ and thereby lost the guiding 



88 RICHARD CROKER. 

benefit of his precepts. zEsop was witli his master on 
a journey. The latter, to be in favor with his wife, — 
a fate for which all good, wise husbands pray, — con- 
ceived for her a sweet surprise, and one which ladies 
love. 

" Take this," quoth he, " and return to my house and 
give it to the one who loves me best." 

With that he put into ^sop's gnarled hands a neck- 
lace. The malignant little hunchback flew home, 
exhibited the jewel, and repeated his master's 
words. 

"It is for me!" said the wife, all conscious smiles, 
and stretching forth an ardent hand. 

" No," retorted ^sop, " it is not for you. My mas- 
ter's commands design it for the one who loves him 
best." 

With that yEsop flung the gift about the neck of a 
spaniel and was subsequently well clubbed for his in- 
sight. '^Esop might more wisely have minded his 
times. Eichard Croker would have come better off 
and disregarded a fact to adhere to an intention. 

That great requisite of leadership is to be sure you're 
followed. Without following there is no leader. One 
may be wise, and live in isolation; one may be right, 
and be alone, and generally one is. But one cannot on 
such terms write one's self " leader," and Richard 
Croker found this knowledge in his breast at birth. 
He will make no struggle against the popular will, and 
guides his adherents by going with them; leads them 
by walking at their head. And there has never been 
commander of history — not one — who was not driven, 
in his own calls and to preserve himself, to follow that 
same axiom of supremacy. The First Charles de- 



THAT WHITEHALL TRAGEDY. 89 

clined it, and at Whitehall that winter day he lost his 
head. It was probably the least head in his dominions; 
but it was of moment to him. He forfeited it by fail- 
ure to match his times; because he would go one way 
when his people would go another. Cromwell, greater 
than one thousand kings in one, with more of courage 
and wisdom and worth of manhood than ever put on 
English crown, was fain to swerve and turn — twist like 
a fox, shift color like a chameleon, to sustain himself. 
Cromwell succeeded, however, for he made sure to 
match his times. It is by identical tactics that Kich- 
ard Croker, during his sixteen years of leadership, has 
buttressed against overthrow. It is thus he conserves 
his interest and treasures himself. 

It is an enchanting study, this study of success. 
"Would you have victory? Embrace your times and 
make yourself their partner; clip and trim your pro- 
fessions with the scissors of current taste; don't stand 
aloof, don't go too close; make love to your hour and 
offer honest marriage. And while you say " yes " to 
your age, practice the negative wherever possible with 
individual man. There is a charm in "no!" and a 
safety. Say it on every chance when the saying does 
not exclude you from the common march. Much vir- 
tue in " no! " It avoids drink, it saves money, it makes 
for good repute, declines disgrace, and cultivates re- 
spect. And it multiplies the worth of "yes!" when 
you utter it. 

Richard Croker will dissemble like a Greek. Yet 
one should understand: He is true to his friends and to 
his cause; he moves without treachery, harbors no trea- 
son; and his given word is gold. But he will cloak his 
plan, and bury his thought, and hide his facts, even 



90 RICHARD CROKER. 

from his friends; and all to the end that final victory- 
heir no peril. 

" Justice is the interest of the stronger," said 
Thrasymachus; and while Socrates defeated him in the 
colloquy, the apothegm of our Greek has won the 
practical acceptance of mankind. " Justice is the 
interest of the stronger," and mendacity is the natural 
sentinel of interest. Plato would have refused this in 
the day of his Academy; Sir Thomas More would have 
excluded it from his Utopia. But More was no pilot, 
and made but half a voyage. At first he sailed bravely, 
and was enough seaman of policy to succeed Wolsey as 
Chancellor. But the storms came, and his sailorship 
broke down; he crashed on the reefs of the Tower, and 
the ax got the head that had ceased to serve its mas- 
ter's turn. 

And do you object to mendacity? Do you favor 
civilization? You told me a few chapters to the 
rear that you did, and belabored me with hard words 
because I appealed against it. Do you favor civili- 
zation? Why, then, it is moored and held by the 
lies we tell. We have scaled the bluff ages with ladders 
of lies. Lies! they have been our race's best weapon of 
offense. As for defense, why, lies are our citadel! If 
New York were to tell herself the truth for ten 
minutes, solitude and silence and desertion would 
sweep and swim the streets like a blight. And at the 
crisis where his lunatic, general veracity, trod the 
lips and seized the ears of folk, historians would close 
their chapters. They would begin the next ominously 
and with darkling caption : " The Last Days of New 
York." 

Within limits of interest, personal to one's self, the 




John Kelly.- 



VOLTAIRE, THE EXCELLENT. 91 

right to lie is perfect. " When telling a lie will be 
profitable, let it be told," wrote Herodotus. There is 
property in a thought, a plan, or a fact. One has no 
more right to search )^our head than to search your 
pocket. One has no more title to your knowledge 
or your programme, than to your money or your 
watch. You may as properly prevent his larceny of 
the one as of the other. When silence is no disguise, 
or spells discovery, — and query may be framed to such 
a sequence, — mask your plan with mendacity, hide your 
knowledge in a cloud of lies. 

There was Voltaire, — I've ever admired him, — an 
artist of untruth. True! Voltaire got into the Bastille; 
but he got out again. Voltaire lived success. He duped 
those who would have cozened and used him; he spoiled 
the Egyptian, and was enriched; in a day of fetters he 
was free; in an era of strictest censorship, and when a 
press Avas bridled, he wrote and printed as he pleased; 
he met his friends, he missed his enemies, and was at 
ease while others sweated and wrestled; he lived with 
undimmed faculty to the age of eighty-four, and died 
generally honored because generally denounced. What 
more of value may one find in life? Take my rede for 
it: he who may lock a door may lie; the right in the one 
is the right in the other. 

Croker is expert of the mask; he can feign a feel- 
ing or pretend a thought. And he does both when 
dealing with his unfriends. He calculates coldly, and 
never permits feud nor a knowledge of another's trea- 
Bon, in esse or accomplished, to prevent his use of that 
man. He will plow with the heifer of his foe — aye! 
with the foe himself, while the plowing plows a profit. 
He will meet folk whom he knows to be false; beam on 



92 RICHARD CROKER. 

them with bland interest, appear to give them his con- 
fidence, and to rely on their loyalty as a main support; 
he will assign them their tasks, and let the nose of ex- 
pectation sniff reward; he will turn his back on them 
as one who is sure of their white truth, and walk away 
the picture of unconscious openness. It seems a sinful 
and a devil's deed to betray a soul so defenselessly 
childlike and trusting. Be not aroused. Those false 
ones have been deluded; they are in invisible irons, and 
always in sight. It is as double odds they carry forth 
the Croker plan; it is certain they will do no harm. 
There are thousands who went forth to shear Croker, 
and returned shorn. 

Of the multitude to make up Tammany Hall, there 
are hundreds who come within the close and per- 
sonal radius of Croker. And there are other hundreds, 
not specifically of Tammany Hall, who, for office, or 
some contract or franchise-preference of the town, are 
found to join these. It is a court; and our applicants 
of favor become courtiers of Croker. Eighty per 
cent, of these come not for Croker, nor Tammany 
Hall, nor party betterment; they come for themselves. 
And they fawn and they flatter; and they fish for those 
trouts of office, or contract, or franchise, which brought 
them to this pool of the profitable. 

And in their midst is Croker; smooth, silent, blandly 
ignorant of design on the part of anyone, and as though 
plot were preposterous as an idea; believing every lie, 
gulping every compliment like spHng-water; the most 
fooled and cheated creature beneath the stars — appar- 
ently. But appearances waylay the fact. There isn't 
one about him whose measure for better or worse is not 
within the archives of his thought; no one he doesn't 



AN ADEPT OF CHICANE. 93 

apprehend in his last true detail. Not a word does one 
utter that isn't instantly tried by the acid of what he 
knows; and this last is a term to cover the marvelous. 
In short it's a game— the game of politics; and 
Croker defeats these folk; and turns them, and twists 
them, and takes them in, and moves them about, and in 
all things does with them what one, expert, might do 
with children at a hand of cards. Croker knows these 
folk as he knows his way to bed; he knows what is in 
them as he knows the contents of his pocket; from be- 
ginning to end he uses them with the same cool, steady 
cunning wherewith a mechanic uses tools. 

At that play where man meets man, and one is to be 
ridden and the other ride, Croker is the adept ineffable 
and not to be expressed. He ever rides; and in his 
day has cinched his saddle on all sorts, from presidents 
and governors— men of nation, men of State and town 
—down to that least atom of power, the man of one 
vote who blackens boots or sweeps the crossing of a 
street. 

Once, on the evening of a reception to Croker, 
when hundreds thronged the Democratic Club, 
among them men of money, and others who had filled 
the highest places of state, and all beamingly, bowingly, 
scrapingly gracious to the " Chief," to a point that 
might sicken self-respect, Croker said to me: 

"Of course one must understand these people. 
They are here for their interest, and to gain their 
points. Many of them would leave the party, and 
assail me, the moment it served their turns. Three of 
five who are here would do both. The others you 
could bank on, fair weather or foul— you could go to 
war and depend on them. They have principles.''' 



94 RICHARD CROKER. 

But if Eichard Croker can be suave^ veil his esti- 
mates of folk^ and deceive Deceit, he can be blunt 
enough at times. It depends on the when, and the 
where, and the who. Craft is with Croker artificial; 
or, if it's his nature, then it's his second nature. His 
first is to be frank and open and boldly obvious. There 
was an editor and owner of a paper of power and daily 
warrant. Also the editor was personally drunken, 
treacherous, and noisily vulgar — precisely the sort to 
have Croker's contempt, arouse his antipathy, rasp his 
sensibility, and nurse his disgust. It was in the sharp 
midst of a campaign. One would suppose it no 
moment when Croker would lose a friend or make a 
rebel. The editor — rather sober for him, he was — ap- 
proached Croker with a leer of amiability. Croker 
met him with an eye of frost. 

" Why is it, Mr. Croker," said the editor, in tones 
husky with dead rum, but friendly, " why is it you 
never gave me your confidence? " 

" You would be a good man to give my confidence 
to," said Croker, " if I wanted never to see it again." 
Then proceeding to direct reply, he went on: "I'll tell 
you why I don't give you my confidence and why I 
never will; it's because you're dishonest, and can't be 
trusted. Then again, you're a coward and will run 
like a deer. Your word and your courage are both 
bad." 

That editor made feeble expostulation, and couldn't 
understand. Croker recounted his maldeeds of trea- 
son, ingratitude, and broken faith. It was a sad 
record; true in every word, but unpleasant to the editor 
who had thus provoked a sketch of his career. 
Croker's tones had a chill in them, too, as if one were 



THE CROKER CONTRADICTIONS. 95 

in the near presence of an iceberg in the night. The 
editor made stumbling expedition to withdraw to 
balmier company. 

That editor was a millionaire; and his paper was of 
an import of politics with any in the town. Yet Croker 
flung his aching story in his teeth, as if he'd been the 
meanest emigrant last landed. And the reason? Be- 
cause it was true in the first place; and, in the next, its 
telling could do no harm. If the effect would have been 
to turn the batteries of that paper against next day's 
Democracy, Croker, fro tempore, would have met our 
drunken, treason-mongering vulgarian, its editor, with 
a mood as sweet as May. But he knew the man. He 
knew his avarice; his sodden lack of self-respect. 
Aware that the paper supported Democracy, and at- 
tended the hunt, a mere jackal of politics, hopeful of an 
offal prey, some tidbit of a putrid profit, Croker was 
equally aware that no insult of truth would inflame it 
into opposition. It would remain leal to its appetite 
for city advertising, and therefore leal to party; in 
fact, the adherence of that editor would be rather 
strengthened than made less, when taught to know 
that his vermin length and breadth and depth of sordid 
purpose were entirely arrived at and understood. 

Richard Croker knows his men, and finds and 
matches his men; corresponds with his environment 
and fits it to him like a coat; accommodates himself to 
his times, as Machiavelli says one must; dovetails with 
events as they transpire. In seeming ever frank, he 
is as close-locked as the grave; apparently a reed for 
graceful pliancy, he is as bendless as the oak; never 
hearing, he is all ears; never seeing, he owns the eyes of 
Argus; never knowing, he has the story of every man 



66 RICHARD CROKER. 

and fact at finger's end; innocent, lie is a fox for policy; 
timid, he is as formidable as a bear; slow, he is as swift 
to smite as a bolt from above; hesitating, he is as 
prompt as a flash-light; careless, he is as accurate as 
a rapier; and of things, for things, by things political 
he is never when nor where nor what one anticipates. 
Also, with a genius to be military — doubtless derived 
from Cromwellian fathers — no matter how a war may 
roll, Croker is ever moving and pushing towards the 
high ground. His secret of mastership, when one has 
added the rest, would seem to lie in that thought of 
Machiavelli of a profound talent of " accommodation 
and correspondence with his times." 



VIII. 

MORE SUBSIDIARY COIN. 

" O wow ! " quo' he : were I as free, 
As first when I saw this countrie, 
How blythe and merrie I wad bee, 
And I wad nevir think lang." 

— The Oaberlunzie Man. 

Our last chapter was provoked by a comer with a 
question. It is to be hoped there is none other eaten 
of a misfit curiosity to follow him and his inquisitive 
example. Were there a procession of such, this work 
might become for length another Burton's " Anatomy 
of Melancholy," and dolefully laden of six hundred 
thousand words. How our old Oxonian must have 
moiled and wrought and burned wax! No marvel he 
was glum! Surely, his weary tomes grew with the 
gloom they fed on. 

Richard Croker, when meeting men of assured posi- 
tion, political, social, or financial, brings to his counte- 
nance a deal of dignity and reserve. There is courtesy; 
but nothing of impulsive affability. Croker never 
flatters; by the same word! a flattery of Croker is a 
waste of time. That dulcet commodity has polite 
reception, — if a mild silence may be thus described, — 
but its sole effect is to disturb distrust. 

When Croker encounters folk of prominence and 
rank, whether the meeting be casual or of purpose, he 
clothes himself with a cool, wholesome urbanity, which, 
conceding nothing, adventures no demands. His air is 

97 



9b RICHARD CROKER. 

that of one who, certain of his own respect, is ready to 
extend respect to you. It is to Croker's credit that the 
poorest and weakest, and folk of puniest kind, political 
and otherwise, may find him with a quick readiness as 
encouraging as it is perfect. There are no fences nor 
defenses about Croker. All who have wish or occasion 
to meet him are at once received. And the weak and 
the poor, and those in the fangs of some distress, have 
ever the better reception. Such touch Croker nearly; 
they recruit to their aid his quickest sympathy; he 
brings them closer to him than any who, pompous, safe, 
and self-approved, comes with hands of power and 
brows of consequence. 

" Yes," said Croker, on a day when his habit of open- 
door to all had undergone a comment; " yes, I see every- 
body. And particularly I haven't the heart to turn 
these poor people away. They squander my time, and 
often I can do them no good. But they don't know 
these things; and their small affairs are of as much 
interest to them as the business of any money monarch 
is to him. Were I driven to name what I regard as 
most to my credit, it would be that, during the sixteen 
years I've been at the head of Tammany Hall, every 
man, rich or poor, small or great, who wanted to see 
me, did see me, and was listened to. And when I could 
I helped him. I wouldn't want a better epitaph." 

That sympathy of Croker for the young and strug- 
gling is never far to call. In 1897, following Tammany 
success, Croker was at Lakewood. A crowd had fol- 
lowed him; with others were representatives of a score 
of papers. Among these was a boy of twenty; bright, 
alert, indefatigable. Croker observed him. One day 
the boy told Croker that his ambition was to study law. 



THE LAW STUDENT. 99 

" Where is your home? " asked Croker. 

Our youth replied that he came from Buffalo; that 
his parents were dead; and, being moneyless and with a 
living to earn, he must defer his law studies until he 
had hoarded enough to keep him through those three 
years of law-reading which the statutes impose on the 
novice. 

" How much does your paper pay you? " asked 
Croker. 

" Thirty dollars a week." 

Croker said no more. A few days later one of the 
city's chief law officers notified the youth that he had 
been named as his — the law officer's — private secretary 
with a salary of twenty-two hundred dollars a year, a 
four-year term, and a chance to study law. 

This episode made an impression on me. Time had 
carved me a cynic. I was old in politics, and full of a 
callous experience as the daily critic and historian of 
politicians. It was the first deed of any Christian love- 
liness from the hand of politics to come within my ken. 
Since then I've known Croker to " throw away," as your 
case-hardened party man might say, hundreds of places 
for the same reason of goodness, and in the same way. 
I taunted him with this soft excellence of heart; he 
seemed abashed. 

"That's not generosity," said Croker argumentatively; 
" it's the same old story of machine politics, only it's 
reversed. The rule, of course, is that a man must earn 
his office before he gets it. In these cases I gave 
the boys the places before they had earned them. It 
makes no last party difference; they can go on and 
work for the party now in return for their offices. 
There you have the idea; it works no loss to the Democ- 

. LofC. 



100 RICHARD CROKER. 

racy, and it's a good thing for the boys." And at that 
Croker laughed with a hearty uneasiness that spoke of 
bashful fear lest one might deem him generous, and of 
a warm, soft sympathy, when frozen precedent would 
have him hard as ice. 

Croker is tolerant of the young, and will forgive 
error or mistake where youth and inexperience plead in 
its excuse. This tolerant tenderness doesn't extend 
itself in any wrong action of an oldling. There was 
an Albany crisis; the Democrats of the Legislature be- 
haved badly. One gray senator was peculiarly weighed 
in the balance of those events, and found wanting. It 
was a week later when he met Croker. The latter re- 
garded the derelict with a brow both untoward and 
bleak. 

" You did nicely," observed Croker, in tones none 
the less indurated for being musically low; " you did 
nicely up at Albany! The Republicans made you look 
like children. You would have done as well if you'd 
stayed at home." 

"What could I do?" asked the other appealingly, 
spreading his hands. 

" Why, nothing, of course," replied Croker. " I 
didn't know that when you were sent there, but I know 
it now." 

It was the death sentence; both understood it. That 
" statesman " did not go back. Yet such is the crush- 
ing force of Tammany discipline that not a thought of 
rebellion, none of retort, rose in the breast of the dis- 
rated one. He now toils cheerfully in the party ranks, 
without office, and without its hope; and he and Croker 
meet with no more of difference than they felt 
before. 



THE FOE WITHIN. 101 

This instance is a specimen brick of scores on scores 
just like it. The justice of the situation is recognized 
by both. Tammany Hall in its essence is pure mili- 
tary. When a man fails, a man forfeits; none may 
keep a place who is too weak for its administration, too 
unskillful for its defense. Croker removes the. man, 
and it occurs neither to Croker nor the one removed 
that there are to be resultant heats, heart-burnings, 
and mutinies; There have been now and then those to 
prove exceptions to this law. One might count a dozen 
such. They, as a rule, were names rich, young, and in 
the van of leadership. Each deemed himself powerful 
and contested with Croker his dictum of deposal. One 
and all they perished; their bones whiten on the hill- 
sides of party. 

He who at any hour is head of Tammany Hall will 
not alone face foe without; he must fend against per- 
sonal overthrow by forces which arise within. A weak 
man couldn't last; nor one unwise nor careless. It is 
not that in the surroundings of a Tammany chief there 
lurks uncommon treachery; it is due to the natural law 
that the strong is to supplant the weak. Whatever 
may be your place or fortune, you who read this, be 
assured that in the sweating fret and jostle of exist- 
ence, where Self is king and Appetite is statute, there 
are blind, ambitious thousands, unknown to you and to 
whom you are unknown, striving dumbly, sightlessly, 
yet none the less jealously, as against you, to seize 
them both. And if you are to hold your place and for- 
tune as against them and their reachings, it must and 
may only be by dint of superior power, whether of wit 
or arm or position, which you possess. Such is the law 
of life. Such it has ever been; such will it ever be; and 



102 ttlCHABD CROKER. 

that, too, for all the prayers and tears and curses to 
find sigh or fulmination in demand of its repeal. 

Croker guards himself against overthrow from within 
by limiting the possibility of power-growth in those 
about him. He does not have a deputy-chief to repre- 
sent him; he has four or five. He grants to no one sub- 
altern his whole countenance; he divides and sub- 
divides it among several. Among his lieutenants he 
splits his proxy, and arms each with a fragment of 
his authority. Each has his little field of domination; 
each his work. Add them together, and you find the 
boundaries of Crokerian domain. The reason given 
for this subdivision is a labor-saving one; the logic 
on which it bears runs to the effect that work is better 
done where by division none is overworked. The 
fact occurs, however, of safety to Croker's leadership. 
By virtue of this system of cautious allotment of 
powers in small parcels, no underling becomes over- 
important or unduly tall. Also it breeds distrusts and 
doubts and jealousies among Croker's subcaptains thus 
distinguished. Each watches the other; and while 
eager to promote himself, he is evenly solicitous to curb 
and cramp whatever of a personal-political tendency to 
bourgeon the others may exhibit. These four or five 
under-captains, lacking confidence in one another, are 
sure to be, for self-defensive reasons, in moods of per- 
fect confidence in Croker as the source of their impor- 
tance. This system, excellent enough for Tammany 
Hall, is perfect for Croker. It curtails individual fol- 
lowing, denies concentration, and avoids the threat of 
overgrowth by any under him. 

Croker listens to slander; listens to disbelieve it. 
He who bears ill tales to Croker makes a fool's journey 



FRIENDSHIP A SPECIALTY. 103 

and does the errand of a fool. He but rakes the pond 
for the moon; he will take nothing by his effort. 
Croker will listen in chill silence. The one effect of 
slander, so far as Croker is concerned, is the injury of 
the vilifier; and not infrequently a nearer regard for 
him vilified. 

Croker is loyal to a friend to the point desperate. 
There was a journalist on terms of tepid half-intimacy 
with Croker. He resigned from the paper whereon 
he had been engaged. Two weeks later Croker returned 
from England. A covey of folk, leading figures of 
Tammany Hall, were on the dock as Croker came down 
the gang plank. One of the " editors " of that paper — 
a mere reporter not being held of metal heavy enough 
for the enterprise — approached Croker. The State 
campaign was at hand; the " editor " was cockily confi- 
dent of Croker's quick and bowing complaisance. 

" I want to interview you, Mr. Croker," he said, 
" on the matter of your plans for the campaign at 
hand." 

" If I'm to be interviewed," replied Croker, " I would 
prefer that Adams write it." 

" Adams is no longer with the paper," said the 
"editor" coldly; "if you were to give him an inter- 
view, he wouldn't run it in our columns. It's for that 
cause I came to talk with you myself." 

" Still," returned Croker, who felt the point of loyalty 
to a friend at stake, " I should not care to be inter- 
viewed save by Adams." 

" Then," retorted the " editor," with a spirit for the 
haught and asperous, " I am commissioned to inform 
you that the paper and Adams are not on good terms. 
You must make your choice between the friendship of 



104 RICHARD CROKER. 

Adams and that of the paper I represent. You can't 
have both." 

" That's discouraging," observed Croker, and his 
tones were pregnant of a sneer. " Sindej your paper 
finds it necessary to put the case in that way, you may 
return and say that it took me ten seconds to decide; 
tell the paper I'll take Adams." 

Those who, regarding Croker in his character of 
a calculating general, would deem him weak in thus 
casting aside the support of a powerful journal on the 
eve of battle, and all for a sentimental favoritism for 
one who could at best but render little service, would 
reason with much of shallowness. There were two argu- 
ments to lift up their voices with Croker. His under- 
chiefs, full five-score, were looking on. He would not 
furnish them the weakening exhibition on his part of 
sacrificing friendship to fear — of being forced into dis- 
loyalty to a friend by the threat of power. His 
" leaders," observing, would say nothing; but it would 
unsettle their ideals of him and shake his status. 
Again Croker refiected: "■ H I yield to this paper in its 
attempt to bully, it will despise me. Moreover, find- 
ing me weak, it will be back to-morrow with another 
demand, and another threat. On the contrary, if I 
stand rocklike by my friend, this paper will respect me. 
It will say, ' His friendship is worth having; no pressure 
can break down his loyalty and force him to set his 
obligations at naught.' That very paper will be my 
better friend in the end." And with the last word 
Croker was wise and right. It was one of those occa- 
sional coils when the proverb, " Honesty is the best 
policy," obtained. 

Croker is by nature one irritable, nervous, and with 



VENGEANCE A VIRTUE. 105 

sensibilities fine as silk; also, he is. of the tiger's temper. 
Yet to the eye of most regardful inquiry Croker would 
seem indifferent, phlegmatic, and of an epidermis the 
thickness whereof might challenge the envy of ele- 
phants. His temper is there, however, albeit absolutely 
within hand. Cool he is, but never cold; and his hates, 
like his friendships, are fire-fed. Croker conquered 
himself early; he has held himself in subjection 
ever since. One, misled by a surface placidity, might 
disbelieve in the existence of Croker's capacity for 
wrath. Those who are most with him gain ever and 
again a flash which plays on his face like sheet-light- 
ning, and then is gone. Asa friend once said: " Those 
who believe Croker has no temper might better lift one 
of his griddles." 

But as related, Croker has conquered himself. No 
man has yet beheld the least slant of rage from Croker. 
He is calm, tolerant, conservative, and was never 
called nor driven to say corrosive word of any. Croker 
will speak well of his most hateful foe, or steep himself 
in silence. This serenity of tone and word and thought 
with Croker has a threefold cause. It grows from his 
policy, his religion, and his self-respect. Croker by 
nature is revengeful, but he has broken the teeth of 
that taste. He has now no quality of vengeance in 
what he does; he will follow a foe no further than the 
gates of victory. His friendships and gratitudes have 
blossoms; his vengeances lie fallow and barren. 

Croker will take from folk of meek pretense en- 
comium for this defeat of his temper for reprisal and 
vengeful retaliation. In truth, it comes to be a weak- 
ness. It is unnatural, and the unnatural is ever weak 
and ever wrong. Vengeance is twin brother to grati- 



106 mCHARD CROKER 

tude; that same mother of infinite order and an equal 
Justice bore them both. Does a man do you a deed of 
good? your warm gratitude is out of breath with 
eagerness to make return. That is because you recog- 
nize a debt — an obligation. By virtue of that great 
natural law of poise and counterpoise, and which every- 
where demands an equilibrium, you feel the claim of 
good for good. By that same argument you shall and 
should retort harm with harm, and with injury pay 
your debts of injury. 

It's all of a like, and the terms good and bad — as 
those others, heat and cold — are but different names 
for the same thing. Gratitude and vengeance are 
identical as an instinct of repayment. Also, in nature, 
neither is discovered without its fellow. Meet him 
with strength to be grateful, and you will have met one 
at whom it is perilous to launch a wrong. Also, ven- 
geance is deterrent and goes to extinguish the general 
flame of ill. Your sheriff is naught save a public 
avenger; and if, for wrong done, the retaliation of the 
individual be evil, then your statutes against crime are 
but so much legislative sin. That blade of criticism 
which hamstrings one will hamstring both. 

Croker doesn't believe that doctrine, and with him 
justice and mercy mean the same thing. That one 
who in the courts of his resentment is convicted of in- 
juring him most, suffers no harsher sentence from 
Croker than the loss of his aid. A refusal to help is 
Croker's maximum punishment; and that, too, though 
the malefactor had sought his life. This last is not a 
figure, but a fact; and there be those to walk the 
streets in proof of it. 

Once Croker talked of the follies of rage. " One 



^o.-:.>-.'.<mimi^^^^^. 




The Tammany Hall Portrait of Richard Croker. 



■*: 



STEAD'S INTERVIEW. 107 

should never fail to control one's temper," said he; 
" I've done that from the first. No man ever saw rae 
angry. And the reason lies in the fact that anger, on 
your part, weakens you and strengthens your enemy. 
Coolness is a weapon, and you lose that weapon when 
you lose your temper. And there's a peril in wrath. 
If a man gets angry, his enemy can trap him into a 
fight when he isn't ready. You give your foe an ad- 
vantage. You fight him when he is ready and when 
you are not — if you're angry. This is wrong. Make it 
a point to fight when you are ready, and when your 
enemy is not ready. That is the A B C of victory. 
You have learned the alphabet of contest when you 
have learned to avoid wrath." 

In this connection it seems well to insert a printed 
conversation between Croker and the English editor 
Stead. One will gain from it a double thought. It 
will tell a story of Croker's philosophy, and glance also 
on his book-attainments, concerning which last there is 
so much of a malevolent untruth to be gadding about. 

" Mendacity! " cry you. " But it was only a chapter 
ago when you asserted the right to tell a lie! " 

So I did, reader! and you do well to pick me up. 
But nowhere do I advance a reason for believing one. 
The right to lie at times and under given conditions is 
perfect, as I said; but the duty of disbelief is equally 
perfect, with no relieving exceptions. 

Stead was in converse with Croker, and printed the 
result in the London magazine of which the former is 
the publisher. The article from which the excerpts be- 
low are taken appeared in the issue of the Review of Re- 
views for October, 1897. No one will claim for Stead a 
better honesty than belongs with any common man; but 



108 RICHARD CROKER. 

it is not an extravagance to assume that from Stead, 
who is an Englishman, and with only a visiting interest 
in this country and its politics, one would be as apt to 
gain a truth concerning Croker as from confessed foes, 
made doubly rabid by wrath and a vulture-hunger for 
office which burns unappeased because of him. This 
is from the Review: 

" ' Tammany Hall,' Croker began, ' is much spoken 
against; but unjustly. You will never understand 
anything about New York politics if you believe all 
that they [the public press] write in the papers. They 
are ever abusing Tammany. But the truth is Just the 
opposite of what they say. Tammany's reputation has 
been sacrificed by newspaper men whose sole desire is 
to increase their circulation. They appeal to the pub- 
lic's itch for change and a malignant delight in the 
misfortunes of onr fellows.' 

" ' Do you think the world is built in exactly that 
way? ' I asked. 

" ' No,' he replied with emphasis, ' it is not built that 
way, but quite another way. These things I speak of 
are temporary; the permanent law of the world and 
humanity is quite different. You asked me how it 
came that Tammany was overthrown three years ago, 
and I have told you. But the issue of an election is 
but an incident. The law that governs has exceptions. 
The exception proves the rule.' 

" ' And what is the rule? ' I asked, somewhat curious 
to know the ' Boss's ' theory of the universe. * What 
is the underlying fundamental law of the universe? ' 

"'Sir,' said Croker, speaking with quiet gravity, 
' the law is that, although wrongdoing may endure for 
a season, right must, in the long run, come to the top. 



CALUMNY IS MORTAL. 109 



Human nature is not built so that roguery can last. 
Honest men must come to their own, no matter what 
the odds against them. There is nothing surer than 
that. Calumny and thieving may have their day, but 
they will pass. Nothing can last but truth.' 

Really,' I exclaimed, ' what an optimist you are! 
I have not found so great a faith,— no not in Israel,' 
I added, laughing. 

"'That's right,' Croker replied. 'If you put ten 
honest men into an assembly with ninety thieves, hu- 
man nature is such that the ten honest men will con- 
trol the ninety thieves. They must do it. It is the 
law of the world. Evil by its nature cannot last. 
"Honest" John Kelly, who was leader before me,' 
continued Croker, ' used to tell me, " Never mind the 
odds against you, if you are in the right. Being in the 
right is more than odds. Keep on hammering away, 
and you are sure to win! " ' " 

Boswell had an easy task. Johnson would talk. 
His Scotch life-writer had but to smite the rock of 
Johnson's vanity with the rod of query, and a cataract 
of epigram poured forth. Sometimes it ran low in wit, 
and again in wisdom; but it was ever flowing, pompous, 
oracular, making up with sound what it wanted of 
sense, and in all chance giving Boswell something to 
write. Now Croker never says much; his ears have one 
hundred labors where his tongue has one; he is indeed 
silent and over-wordless. Yet is that nothing won- 
derful. Johnson was, when he talked politics, 
which was two-thirds of the time, a theorist; Croker is 
the practice. Theory is a talker; Practice was born a 
mute. Croker does not say political epigrams; he does 
them. 



no BICHARD CROKER. 

Remarkable about Croker is a presence or atmosphere 
not readily defined nor analyzed. It is sinister in 
the sense of the occult. Croker takes natural command 
of men, who as naturally obey. Call it magnetism or 
magic, if you will; the attribute here talked of belongs 
with certain folk. One might have beheld the same 
thing in the instances of Cleveland, of Ingersoll, of 
Reed; for lack of a term one might call it the hypnotism 
of beef. Assuredly it comes not alone of the mind; 
some of the wisest are without it. 

Croker has this virtue to compel; others yield to him. 
I was about, as a wonder-instance of this power in 
Croker, to cite his personal over-running of Hill on 
those three or four occasions when the exigencies of 
politics brought them face to face. But I have another 
thought in that solution. Croker, during locked-door 
conferences of party leaders, has collided with Hill; and 
the latter quailed and withered and turned sear as the 
leaves of a November's beech. It was no vote defeat, 
where numbers on one side overpowered numbers on 
the other. Hill gave way before Croker mentally, obvi- 
ously, and as one cowed; and he who could think as 
cleanly clear as a bowie's edge, and talk like a bowie's 
slash, in the Senate, fell to be mentally stampeded, 
and to mind-fumbling and word-blundering, before the 
eye of Croker. 

It was the more wonderful because none — not the 
most sapient prophet of men — could have forestated 
the phenomenon from those estimates of the two he 
might acquire in personal talk and contact with them. 
These incidents of Croker's power, and Hill's insta- 
bility when made to meet him. were as much a cause 
of amazement to ongazers as they were to Hill. How- 



THE FAILURE OF THE WIFELESS. Ill 

ever, as stated, I account not the said shattering of our 
wifeless egotist of Wolfert's Roost to any Croker hyp- 
notism; I incline to lay it to his unwedded state. It is 
not an explicable matter, and it leaps from discovery 
rather than a thought, but I'm convinced of the certain 
failure of the vidfeless man. Go where you will with 
those who have success, and whether you search among 
warriors, or statesmen, or workers down to the one who 
labors with his hands, your champion will fail not to 
have a wife. Which is the cart and which the horse 
elude me as proposals; whether one is weak because he 
lacks a wife, or lacks because he's weak, I cannot tell. 
Sure it is, however, that in all arenas of effort the wife- 
less man is weak. 

There is but one writer to doubt this, and he is Sir 
Francis Bacon. In his Eighth Essay Bacon relates 
that marriages "are impediments to great enter- 
prises " and that " the best works and of greatest merit 
for the public have proceeded from the unmarried." 
But I shrewdly suspect the crafty courtier was aiming 
a back-handed bouquet at the Royal Elizabeth; a 
woman who, for her owti fame, be it said, should have 
been a wife full twenty times. Bacon's day — a day 
when the Queen he complimented by such delicious in- 
direction made Hatton a chancellor because he could 
dance — was not a time for sour argument; and even 
Truth must then be heedful that its beard was 
trimmed, its clothes splendid, its language in the mold 
of Lyly's " Euphues," and its taste degenerate to the 
sweetened mush of Sidney's " Pembroke's Arcadia." 
Speaking of Elizabeth's court purely, it was an age of 
ear and eye, rather than of turgid, irritating wisdom; 
and be sure the Queen would have held it ill if her 



112 RICHAED CROKER. 

" young lord keeper," as she styled Bacon, had essayed 
on that point of marriage other than he did. But our 
truthless philosopher — who was afterwards to take 
bribes and be impeached — was false with his pen; nor 
did he believe his own written words. He didn't take his 
own medicine. He himself will have a wife, and weds 
an alderman's daughter at the age of forty-five. It's 
as I say: read where you will, the great are ever double. 
Washington was married, Napoleon was married, 
Cromwell was married — all were married. There was 
never but one President of the United States to be a 
bachelor. That was James Buchanan; and the best 
thing one can say of him is, he's dead. Even Catherine 
of Eussia was married, and began her career by mak- 
ing captive her husband. Yes, in sooth! I can't get 
away from the thought that Hill fell before Croker 
because he had no wife. 

But to continue with our work: Croker's talent of 
control, whatever its cause in him, doesn't proceed 
from capacity of perception on the other's part. I've 
beheld this latter tested; and the man violent and 
blurred of drink will tamely obey the quiet word of 
Croker. 

*' Chief " — shouted one obstreperous of many cups, 
at the same time zigzagging up to the Tammany gen- 
eral — " Chief, I've been drinking for ten hours; I'm so 
glad you've got home." 

Croker was in talk with folk when the bibulous 
one approached. He turned with half-cold mildness. 

" You're drunk," he quietly said, " and should go 
home. You mustn't talk now; go straight home." 

" Chief," expostulated the stricken one, " haven't I 
always been true to you? " He hadn't, but that was 



BRAINS IS NOT ENOUGH. 113 

no matter. " And now you talk to me like that! " he 
concluded. " Chief, I wouldn't have believed it! " 

" Go home now," replied Croker in his level tones. 
" I don't want any lectures." 

That one so deeply freighted said never a further 
word, but, issuing deviously forth, fell into a hansom 
and drove home. Yet he was a man of violence; he 
would have obeyed no other voice; a platoon of police 
couldn't have worked the witchcraft of his disappear- 
ance, nor yet the later miracle of that cold-water so- 
briety which has found footing with him since. 

While one is unable to dig up, or develop in words, 
those elements within Croker which give him his mas- 
tery, one may each day see the evidences of their exist- 
ence cutting the waters of events like the back-fin 
of a fish. And one knows they're there. Yet one 
would be as soon baffled should one attempt the 
analysis of any other individual; and that, too, 
whether the individual were failure or success. There's 
more to make a victor, whate'er may be the stage of 
his effort, than mere brains. Intelligence, promoted to 
its utmost, doesn't serve alone. There was Carlisle, 
once of the Cleveland Cabinet. Carlisle was among 
the world's best thinking machines, but that was all. 
With a genius for conclusion, Carlisle was incapable of 
conviction. He was an attorney of the mental, just as 
there are attorneys of law; he could produce you rea- 
son and conclusion by the multitude, without ability 
or power of belief in one of them. There is a stub- 
born virtue in simple belief; many a bad preacher has 
saved himself to interest, touch, and convince by the 
sheer fervency of that integrity of what he said. 

There is more needed to a Pompey than sole brains. 



114 RICHARD CROKER. 

Were I made to prognosticate the •future of a man, I 
would first put my ear to his heart. If the footfall of 
his life was steady, firm, and strongly true; and if his 
stomach walked even with his heart, and his lungs were 
abreast the other two, his story of good fortune to come 
would be four-fifths assured. My question would be 
made on those three angles before ever I talk ten 
words with him or studied the size of his hat. And 
yet, in the end, the secret sought might lie in tempera- 
ment. Under that caption it should be added that 
Croker has one of those temperaments of which Hume 
was thinking when he wrote that they were " prefer- 
able to an inheritance of ten thousand pounds a year." 

■No; there is no mystery to be equal to the mystery of 
a man. To read his future, ox explain his past, or ac- 
count for his present, or whatever of loss or profit any 
of them may show or promise, one must push the search 
beyond the single discovery of brains. In fact, there 
have been experimentalists of men to laugh at that one 
attribute of a wisdom. It was Frederick the Great 
who said, " If I wanted to punish a province, I would 
have it governed by philosophers." 

Nor can you tell the story of a man by measuring his 
education. Books are like firearms; without enrich- 
ing one's native strength, they serve to put the weak 
on partial footing with the powerful. One too weak for 
towering mental efforts, unable at a crisis to evolve an 
argument or make a right decision, may still, being a 
scholar, find in books the thought-out and ofttimes 
tested counsel of the very wise for that emergency 
which scowls upon him. And that is the most of edu- 
cation in any strengthening effect. 

But one might as well surrender. As I've already 



A SMALL SHIPWRECK. 115 

confessed manj' times and again when driven to turn in 
the business, there is no saying in words that one, or 
those fifty elements within Croker, which, being him, 
yield to him his baton. One might repeat for the third 
time, and it would seem to mark the verge of possible 
explanation, that Croker makes daily stipulation with 
himself to keep in " accommodation and correspond- 
ence with his times." 

There is one more story to tell, and that will serve as 
a postern to this chapter through which we may pass to 
the next. It is but a little tale; yet it speaks eloquently 
of two matters: the sensibilities of the ones involved, 
and the hardy gayety of Croker in the teeth of danger, 

"Is Croker given to humor?" said John Scannell, 
repeating the question put by one of several gentlemen 
who were discussing the characteristics of the Tam- 
many chief; " that depends. Ordinarily not; but I've 
seen him face great peril several times, and it always 
seemed to arouse a spirit for fun in him. Perhaps, 
however, it was only his way of trying to encourage 
others. I remember thirty years ago, when Croker 
and I clubbed our small capital and decided to celebrate 
the Fourth of July with a sail on the Sound. We hired 
a sloop-rigged affair and, although not as good sailors 
as I've seen, we got along happily for about two 
hours. We were off City Island when, as if from am- 
bush, a squall struck us broadside on, and there we 
were a capsized, total wreck in a moment. Richard and 
I were clinging desperately to the keel of the boat; the 
seas were washing over us and threatening to carry us 
away. Of course he could swim like a Newfound- 
land dog, and may not, for that reason, have felt the 
jaws of that awful fear that worried me. As far as 



116 RICHARD CROKER. 

I was concerned, however, I thought the end had come 
and death was certain. I started to pray; as being the 
usual, decent way of ending one's career. I was praying 
aloud, and probably with much earnestness, for Rich- 
ard heard me, even through the howls of the storm. 

" ' What are you doing, John? ' he asked. 

" ' I'm praying,' I said. 

" Eichard inched along the keel towards me to grab 
me, if he noticed any symptoms on my part of letting 
go; at the same time I could see a gay smile on his wet, 
storm-whipped face. 

" ' Praying, eh? ' he said cheerfully. ' Why don't 
you wait till we get ashore? ' " 

It was a day or two later when I retold the story to 
Croker. He looked a bit serious; then he said simply: 
" There's one part John doesn't tell; I'd have drowned 
that day, save for him. When the sloop capsized I was 
to leeward of the mast. I was caught in the ropes, 
buried five feet under water, and held there. My 
ability to swim was of no use; I was there in a tangle 
and couldn't get out. I never knew how John did it, 
for I was senseless; but he came down after me and 
stayed till he brought me up. He was going to get me 
or go with me, he told me afterward. As it stood, I 
was fairly drowned, and John had to hold both of us 
on the keel of the sloop for fifteen minutes before I 
was able to take care of myself. We had been out there 
an hour or more when we were taken off. John's story 
is all right; but what he told happened towards the last 
of our stay, when my wits and my strength had come 
back. The part that he didn't tell is the part where he 
saved my life. Well! " concluded Croker as he lapsed 
into thought, " there's only one John Scannell! " 



IX. 



SOME CHURCH THOUGHTS. 

I fear the devil worst when gown or cassock, 
Or, in the lack of them, old Calvin's cloak 
Conceals his cloven hoof. 

— Anonymous. 

Our three chapters in immediate precedence to this 
in sort surprise the march of steady narrative and 
shatter it. They have, however, a destiny. They are 
meant, in their relation of half-grown anecdote and 
matters trivial, to give one that near personal impres- 
sion of Croker which shall be of value as one follows 
through his flight of politics whereof this story pres- 
ently has him on the brink. 

Croker is now about twenty. We have come with 
him through parentage, through childhood, through 
school days; we have watched him as he practiced ath- 
letics for recreation and wrought with forge and iron at 
his craft. Still, it is half in my mind that for the 
three foregoing chapters, devoted to the small, I owe 
apology either to Croker, or the audience, or both. 

xlristotle might not have approved of them; his vote, 
at best, would have depended on his estimates of 
Croker. Were the latter without advertisement, the 
Greek would have condoned that work; otherwise, 
should he conclude on Croker as one wholly known. 
In his " Rhetoric," where the Stagirite lays down rules 
to be the law of sketch-making, he says, " If Achilles 
be the subject of your inquiries, since all know what 

117 



118 itlCHARi) CROKBR. 

he has done, we are simply to indicate his actions with- 
out stopping to detail them; but this would not serve 
for Critias, for whatever relates to him must be fully 
told, since he is known to few." 

Now that I've quoted our thoughtful Greek, I'm in- 
clined to disagree with him. I have, on occasion, quar- 
reled with the dictum of many a man, and why not with 
Aristotle? After, all, though a pupil of Plato, who 
was a pupil of Socrates, he was but another blundering, 
wrong-going, darkened thing called man, like the rest 
of us. Take the Greek at his word. All he knew of 
Achilles one of us may know. We find that the father 
of Achilles was Peleus, and his mother, — that sea- 
daughter — the sweet nereid Thetis. Also, by infer- 
ence, we are to remark that Achilles was first cousin on 
his father's side of Ajax Telamon. x\t the age of six, 
reared and educated by the centaur, Achilles slays lions 
and wolves and runs down stags. Later he is dipped 
in the Styx; and still later, accompanied of the aged 
Phoenix and his friend Patroclus, he goes with a fleet 
of fifty ships — quite a navy — to the Trojan War. 

There you are! And nothing to come of it all save 
a mad, wild hunger for more! For myself, I would 
gladly bestow an hour on the details of whatever of 
housekeeping the parents of Achilles put forth. Also, 
I would be proud to know the daily routine of study 
prescribed by that horse-and-man, his teacher; and 
what system of rewards and punishments, credit-marks 
and canings, Cheiron brought against Achilles to 
fetch him to his book. And those lions: how big were 
they? And those stags he overtook at six; how much 
did they weigh? and Avhat was the count of their tines? 
And then the Styx; was it navigable? and was it fur- 



ARISTOTLE ADVISED. 119 

rowed by other keels than that of the dread ferryman? 
There are a thousand questions to ask, and yet a thou- 
sand more. Even on that day when, in vengeance of a 
dead Patroclus, x\chilles dragged the hewed and slaugh- 
tered Hector thrice around the walls of Troy, speaking 
for myself, I would much prefer to hear what the hero 
had for dinner, the state of his purse, his orders to his 
valet, and the fault found with the cook, than to listen 
to the blood-story. Distinctly I disagree with Aris- 
totle; holding as against him that once a man has done 
great deeds, those small trite matters of common daily 
routine with him swell to a vast importance. The best 
book Walter Scott ever wrote was his journal; and all 
for that it told of the little things that went hourly 
with himself. On the thought second, one is not sure 
that apology is due to anyone. 

Croker, at the age of twenty, walks into politics and 
enters Tammany Hall. There is a dominie of these 
parts noted, rather than celebrated, for the imperfect 
violence of his interference in civic affairs. It is not 
understood that he has unusual vogue as a heart-mov- 
ing pulpiteer; nor are his preachments vivid of that 
honey of character and sweet placidity of gentleness and 
love so marked in the Master Who walked by Galilee. 
Indeed it has been held by folk strangers to the town 
and him, and therefore of no feeling, that our dominie 
was gnawed of bigotry; vain and of an alert conceit; 
one whose heat was that hunger-fervor for the calcium 
of note, never to be satiated. 

This moralist was in a recent public print speaking 
with every license of opprobrium of New York, and 
Tammany Hall, and Richard Croker, and what of 
other men and matters that he happened to mislike. 



120 RICHARD CROKER. 

No one paid uncommon heed. The bitter output was 
recognized as that conventional venom which made the 
way by which he lived; which nourished and clothed 
him, and paid those summer costs when each year he 
leaves the town to Satan's tail and talons and flies to 
coolness and to Switzerland. I have hopes that our 
dominie has come with me in this book thus far. He, 
in his printed scorn of all things save himself, expressed 
him as one curious to learn, not the origin of Croker, 
nor any native trait, but his education and home life 
and the detail of that environment which kept him, 
child and youth. Our dominie declared that once he 
discovered " how one was brought up," he could ac- 
count for that one's after-life, and all but tell what good 
works or bad were to come. All he sought to be made 
aware of was the character of a child's education — in 
the instance when he talked, Croker's education — 
within doors and -without, and he would foretell the 
story of that child. 

It is honest to admit that I step aside to the recol- 
lection of this dominie and his utterances in the spirit 
of contention. There is some question which truth 
might make with what he states, together with an 
exposure of its character as nonsense. Withal, there 
is a severity or two which calls for saying to the Church 
itself. No, I never go to church; like Henry David 
Thoreau, "I've no talent for worship." But what of 
that? May not one look a church in the face and talk 
with it? Your church presents itself as a wash-house 
of the spirit — a place where one may have one's soul 
laundered. Too often it comes to be a hive of hy- 
pocrisy. But whatever it is, it was made by man, and 
is run by man, and man may speak vnih. it plainly. 



NATURE IS CHANGELESS. 121 

One is not to decide that because one does not go to 
church one has no religion. It is for that one has one 
that one sometimes stays away. It is a good religion 
that bases itself on a hatred of hypocrites, a loathing 
of pretenders, a disgust of cowards, and a contempt of 
fools. " Crouched," as Carlyle has it, " between two 
eternities, the future and the past," the least among 
us knows as much as any. And there's a deal of pre- 
tense to your church. He who unlocks the Will-be 
should unlock the Was; the key that fits the future 
should fit the past; tell one, therefore, oh. Church! 
where one has been? That, as a fact, is fixed, and 
should be easier of description than a future which 
lies still in the lap of indecision. 

"Faith," say you? 

What faith? Is it that whereof the playwright 
speaks when in his lines he observes, " Faith! Faith is 
believing something that one knows isn't so." 

But there is a fashion of faith; not your church 
faith, truly! but faith none the less, valid and buoyant. 
It is a faith in all the future, aye! though it be shore- 
less; faith in the unshakable, deathless equity of the 
Plan. It is the faith which serves itself, stands by its 
own strength, and asks no gardening hand to trim or 
train it — no trellis of a creed for its support. 

But to recur to our dominie, who waits for one this 
space. Friar, observe thee: That good or that evil 
which one is to do has its first sprouts in one's nature. 
Those seedlings are immortal beyond any blow of yours. 
They are not man-sown. No mere " bringing up," as 
you phrase it, is to kill them in one breast or keep 
them in another. That " bringing up," or " training," 
or " education of environment," or what you will for a 



122 RICHARD CROEEB. 

term, is a film, a wash, a paint, and altogether of the 
surface. Plant com in a hothouse, give it the care of 
orchid or of rose, yet shall it come forth corn. Ee- 
trieve the pigling of a day from the breast of his 
mother; bestow on him such " bringing up " as you 
prefer; robe him in silks, and sweeten him with baths, 
and feed him milk and lilies. Do this while you please: 
one year, two years, three. Then make your pupil loose. 
That pigling, lusty now and grown, will hie himself to 
the earliest mud-wallow and roll therein; he will crowd 
among his fellows and shout and sing for draff; he will 
guttle his mess with his feet in the trough, and then 
sleep stertorously and offensively therein. 

Training! One can't train a nature out of itself. 
One may put on the pressure of an environment, or the 
manacles of a " bringing up," and so enforce hypocrisy 
and compel a pretense — an assumption of a virtue that 
doesn't exist. But one cannot reach the nature. Re- 
move the pressure, knock off the bonds and your pig, or 
your wolf, or whatever was student of that " bringing 
up," is off for his sty or his cave like water down-hill. 

Friar, even in thine own scolding and slanderous ex- 
ample, the futility of what you say appears. You stand 
proof against your own preachments. You assume 
to teach charity, and you show none; humility, while 
pride grows on you like ivy on a wall; a score of 
times you have taught from the text, " He that is with- 
out sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her " — 
and yet you devote yourself to lashing Magdalens. 

" By their fruits ye shall know them." This was 
uttered of a church as much as any. What are the 
fruits political of the Church? There is small pur- 
pose here, or rather none at all, to consider the Church 




Exterior of the Democratic Club. 



THE CHURCH POLITICAL. 123 

save only as it shoulders its way into politics. There 
is to be short patience with it in that part. As a vote 
guide the Church is worse than a woman. Yet the 
church-political comes and keeps coming. Peculiarly 
is this churchly intromission true concerning city 
government. And this last, be it known, in all that is 
pressing on you, whether of tax or privilege, is of ten- 
fold moment with any rule of Washington. 

And for that the Church is grown so brazen 
to voice its surpliced views; and that, too, as one 
arrogant, declining check or challenge, it should earn 
some comment. The Church should be reminded that 
the civil part borne by it in the centuries is not encour- 
aging. It was against church-avarice that statutes of 
mortmain were enacted; statutes to have present reiter- 
ation in every English-speaking land. This was lest 
at the ghost-scared death-beds of poor, sweating sin- 
ners, the Church should rob his patrimony from every 
man of England. 

In our own Constitution the Church is debarred from 
linking up with State. Our fathers found in their ap- 
prehensions a call to build up a wall against it. To 
their obdurate glory they builded wisely and builded 
well. And now is it for us to permit the Church to 
give counsel tantamount with orders to our wheels- 
men? Look well ere you consent to this. The cen- 
turies show the pulpit no better than the pew; nor half 
so wise. Then keep the church-hand off your public 
work. Decline a church word in your councils. The 
law is the better bulwark; the altar seeks ever itself. 
You may turn the pages of past time until your tired 
arm sinks stricken, yet shall you not turn to any civic 
good accomplished of a church, 



124 RICHARD CROKER. 

Why do I quarrel with the Church? Because, from 
standpoints of the state, it does no equity nor justice. 
It pays no tax when it should. It asks that public 
money be put in its hands, in its own affairs, when it 
shouldn't. Is it the law to do these deeds? Well, 
then, and what of that? There is much to be law that 
fails to be justice. As said an eminent jurist: " He " — 
and the word, if it were " church," would be as true — 
" he who taketh the law of the land for his sole guide 
is neither a good neighbor nor an honest man." Be- 
cause a law built by the cowardice of politicians, or as 
a bribe for churchly aid, opens villain door, must the 
Church rush in? It should, when one studies its assur- 
ances, be the first to close it. And because it doesn't 
close it, but both ways has greedy money advantage 
thereof, one may know that in that spirit of avarice 
which in the times that were stung the state to punitive 
action more than once, the Church to-day is the Church 
that was. The Church is never a patriot and always a 
leech. It is a Bourbon, and in the words of the Cor- 
sican, " learns nothing, forgets nothing! " Oh ! I have 
seen a church and met a clergy who did not in each 
item meet this picture. But that was in a time long 
away, and the region is a far cry from New York. 
Let that wend. 

It has raised its voice as a question, whether our 
clergy, as they return from that world of politics 
where they have been " going to and fro in the earth 
and walking up and down in it," analyze the motive of 
their activity? Is it because their zeal is asked for by 
a coterie of rich parishioners with axes to gain an edge 
by public grinding? They should read where it is writ- 
ten; " For the congregation of hypocrites shall be deso- 



THEIR BELLY PREPARETH DECEIT. 125 

late, and fire shall consume the tabernacle of bribery. 
They conceive mischief, and bring forth vanity, and 
their belly prepareth deceit." 

It is but just to many a clergyman who is copy of 
Goldsmith's "Village Preacher" to admit that my ex- 
perience among their fellows hasn't sent me the best 
specimens. I have only an eye and an ear knowledge 
of those four or five who are so impotently vigorous in 
this town's concerns. And these invoke the honest 
confidence of none. Wisdom pins neither faith nor 
trust to what they say or do. 

For a first discouraging thought they are a camera- 
hunting^ litter. They have each more pictures 
"taken" than some prince-noticed soubrette. And 
of the same motive: the press. These clerics will 
dispatch a half dozen new photographs of themselves to 
each paper in the town each year. And with a cock- 
roach lust for ink, they are ever imploring the attend- 
ance of an interviewer. Also, they love the tents of 
the ungodly. With the curse of rum in hideous exhibi- 
tion all about them, they offer you a sparkling example 
across table of a glassful of wine. They talk of local 
poverty and its relief— talk, mind you, not act— with 
sixty-cent cigars between their lips. At dinners which 
cost twenty dollars a plate, over vintages to call for 
twelve dollars a quart, they debate the freezing and the 
starving not a half mile away. 

" So far as my observation goes," twittered a wren- 
headed fop on an occasion as above painted—" so far 
as my observation goes, the poor are a bum lot." 

And the bishop who had brought up the subject 
laughed as at the utterances of a second Theodore 
Hook. 



126 RICHARD CROKER. 

Wren-head was right: "The poor are a bum lot." 
But if these clerics be Cliristians, and not as he who 
" covereth his face with fatness and maketh collops of 
fat on his flanks," why do they not rise from their beds 
of down, issue forth from their palaces to cost a king's 
ransom, and with a fragment of their salaries of a 
prince, lift for one day, even, the burden of some strug- 
gling, cold-nipped, hunger-beaten wretch? Aye! why 
not, and they be Christians? There live those who are 
not Christians, and a long flight-shot from it in fact, 
yet this wan business of other people's hunger has 
bothered them out of many a dollar, I grant you. 

These are the clergy — and it is they to stir the pot 
of local politics — with whom I've collided. There is 
much in them to distaste. And because of them one is 
driven to certain decisions. One is made to reflect that 
the professionally good cannot be very good; nor those 
excellent for a salary of the best excellence. These 
preachers are the mere hired evidence of the respecta- 
bility of their congregations. Their pulpits are wit- 
ness boxes from which they each week give their testi- 
mony. Their best methods of tendering that proof 
they're paid for, and as well the one most delicate, is to 
find scolding fault with all and everything outside the 
Church. And they earn their money. Like members 
of other professions, they wax vain of their craft. 
They become pleasingly pufl^ed with themselves. They 
look often in the glass, and seldom from the window. 
Stall-fed hypocrites these; the Pharisee and the Scribe 
are their exemplars. 

But were they of souls tender, honest, and patriotic- 
ally true, still one would be as witless as weak to heed 
them in public matters. Of all who are peculiarly 



PULPIT WEAKNESS. 12Y 

impractical and unfitted in what one may call the 
coarser cares of life, he of the pulpit stands first. 
You may not know a course to take in politics; surely 
the pulpit does not. You, politically, may be dull oi 
eye; the Church, politically, is blind. And if you won't 
read history to your caution, at least read that Book 
where it tells of what passeth when the blind leads the 
blind. 

Your Church, too, aside from its license as a pilot of 
morals, is a business institution. In affairs cogent and 
of moment to itself it can be both cunning and vigilant.. 
And there is a business side of politics easily stretched 
to by the Church. Wherefore, you are to scan a pulpit 
counsel as you would the word of any who may have 
some personal iron in the fire. 

Interest aside, however, your preacher is not like to 
be any mighty storehouse of wisdom. The pulpit is 
bound, in the character of the exercise it offers, to 
grow of weakest head. No one contradicts a preacher; 
he goes from cradle to grave uncontended with. For 
him there is nothing to discover, it's all there; noth- 
ing to prove, it's all admitted; none to wrestle with, 
it's all on one side. And so your dominie's mind- 
brawn becomes flabby, faded, and wasted. Nature is 
no spendthrift and throws nothing away. Nature is an 
economist; she arms no one who has no foe, strengthens 
none who goes unopposed. In any non-religious con- 
tingency, whether public or private, your dominie's is 
the last door at which Wisdom, when it has lost its way, 
will rap for direction. 

However, I realize that I strive with the respectable 
superstititions of men; or against their pocketbook, 
which is the most active of all superstitions. There- 



128 BICHARD CROKBR. 

fore shall we finish on this score. " Should a wise 
man utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with 
the east wind? Should he reason with unprofitable 
talk? or with speeches wherewith he can do no good? " 

Tammany Hall was seventy-four years old when 
Bichard Croker, at the age of twenty, wrote his name 
on its rolls. It was a tower of political strength at that 
time; its battlements have thickened and broadened 
and crept upward in the thirty-eight years since then. 

On a bright afternoon Fourteenth Street bustles 
briskly about its business. From Dead Man's Curve in 
Union Square comes the clangor of myriad cable cars. 
An elevated train rumbles uproariously into the station 
in Third Avenue. Smart crowds, hurrying into the Den 
Thompson matinee at the Academy, jostle you about, 
and you pause to draw a breath. Opposite you is the 
building to be the home of Tammany Hall. Looking 
upward your eye catches the legend, Tammany So- 
ciety, and on either side the dates, 1789 and 1867. 

Seventeen hundred and eighty-nine! A hundred 
years roll back, and one is in quaint, colonial New 
York! Fourteenth Street stretches away into sunny 
meadow land, Down-town the great buildings dwindle 
into low, rambling farmhouses. On the corner of 
Nassau and Spruce streets stands a long wooden struc- 
ture, built after the ancient Dutch. This is the tavern 
of one Brom Martling; a sore and drinking grief to the 
quietly inclined. 

" Brom Martling's Long Room " constituted, on 
alternate nights, a dance hall for the festive and a 
wigwam for the early Tammany braves. By reason of 
its unsightliness, the " Long Eoom " was stigmatized 
by Tammany's political adversaries as the " Pig Pen." 



BROM MARTLINQ'S. 129 

The joviality of the old-time gatherings at Martling's 
is traditional. Of Tammany's good cheer the poet Hal- 
leck has sung. 

After the dispatch of regular business those of the 
members who desired " to make a night of it " reorgan- 
ized. The " night " commonly lasted until morning, 
and was spent in drinking political toasts, singing 
songs, and telling stories of the narrator's own brag- 
ging exploits of peace and war. 

Before the days of Martling's the earliest meetings 
of the Tammany Society were held in Barden's Tavern 
in Broad Street. It was not until 1811 that the 
Tammany braves were able to rear a wigwam for 
themselves. Then the old Tammany Hall, which occu- 
pied the present site of the Sun building, was begun. 
Amid much pomp of aboriginal paint and feathers, 
Clarkson Crolius, the Great Sachem of the society, 
laid the corner stone. In 1813 the Hall was first occu- 
pied as the regular Tammany wigwam. It continued 
to be the headquarters of the New York Democracy 
until 1867, when the society erected the present Tam- 
many Hall in Fourteenth Street. A white marble 
statue of the Delaware chief Tamanend (Tammany) 
adorns the fagade of the Fourteenth Street building. 
One reads of him in Cooper's " Last of the Mohicans." 
From him the Tammany Society took its name. 

Tamanend was a great Delaware warrior of the 
Turtle clan, famed in folklore and savage story for his 
sagacity and love of liberty. He ruled over the 
thirteen tribes of the Lenni-Lennape (Delawares) 
confederacy, whereof the home-region was what is now 
New York, Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. 
Tamanend was present at the Great Council under the 



130 niCHARD CROKER. 

elm tree at Shakamakon, and signed the treaty with 
William Penn. The legend runs that he was afterward 
invited by Manco Capae to revise the constitution of 
Peru, and made a journey through Mexico to the land 
of the Children of the Sun for that purpose. On his 
departure for Peru he dedicated each of his thirteen 
tribes to some particular animal, such as the bear, the 
beaver, or the otter, whose good qualities were com- 
mended to Indian emulation. 

During Revolutionary days patriotic societies were 
formed under the name of " The Sons of Tam- 
many." Later Tamanend was adopted as the tutelar 
divinity of Democratic America. These early Tam- 
many Societies were scattered throughout the South 
and West, but up to 1789 had no existence in New 
York nor farther east. To William Mooney, a famous 
citizen, belongs the credit of having organized the 
Tammany Society in New York. Mooney was an 
Irishman by descent, an American by birth. During 
the Revolution he was a leader among the famous 
" Liberty Boys." After the war Mooney went into 
business as an upholsterer on Nassau Street. 

It was Mooney's thought to call the society the 
" Columbian Order," but he wisely yielded to the 
Indian name, and in 1805, sixteen years after its 
formation, the association was incorporated as 
" The Tammany Society." Its members clung to the 
musical Indian appellation. In the old records the 
Christian Era was discarded, and all transactions were 
dated from three events; the discovery of America by 
Columbus, the Declaration of Independence, and the 
formation of the Tammany Society. The year was 
quartered into the seasons of Blossoms, of Fruits, of 



WASHINGTON AND TAMMANY. 131 

Harvests, and of Snows. The months were recorded 
after the Indian method, as first, second, and third 
"Moons," The charter of Tammany describes it as 
simply a charitable institution. The society frequently 
has assisted the needy. At its earlier meetings it was a 
common custom for the hat to be passed around in 
favor of destitute patriots or their widows and orphans. 
In later years Tammany has contributed deeply in 
times of public disaster — pestilence, flood, and famine 
— both in this country and abroad. 

But in its youth Tammany was exclusively a social 
body. It made a specialty of celebrations. During 
the earlier days the festival of Tammany, held on the 
12th of May, was a notable holiday. Booming cannon 
and waving flags heralded its dawn. Tammany braves 
paraded the streets in a glory of paint and feathers. 
In the evening the populace repaired to the only 
theater in the town. On one occasion a play entitled 
" Tammany, or the Indian Chief," was presented on the 
boards. Washington, with several members of his 
Cabinet, applauded the performance. 

Tammany's first successful stroke of politics occurred 
in 1790, a year after the formation of the society. 
There had been trouble with the Creek Indians along 
the frontiers of Georgia and the Carolinas. The 
national debt was heavy. The people were war- 
impoverished. The paleface for once wanted peace. 
Washington, anxious to conciliate the would-be hos- 
tiles, invited a delegation of the Creek chiefs to visit 
him in New York, then the seat of government. 
Washington realized that the outcome of this visit de- 
pended largely on the impression which their welcome 
created in the minds of the Indian delegates. Upon 



132 RICHARD CROKER. 

their arrival, at Washington's request, the Creeks were 
received by Tammany in the temporary wigwam at 
Barden's Tavern. The Tammany braves had painted 
and befeathered themselves to the last effect. The 
Indian chiefs were delighted with their hosts. To 
show their joy, they danced and sang the screeching 
Et-hoh song. A satisfactory treaty was concluded 
with Washington, " the beloved Sachem of the thirteen 
tribes." 

Tammany conducted the first festival in honor of 
the discovery of America by Columbus. The celebra- 
tion was held on the 12th of October, 1792, and com- 
memorated the three hundredth anniversary of the 
day. But the early Tammanyites could be reverent as 
well as gay. For many years it had been a reproach 
to the Government that the skeletons of the eleven 
thousand five hundred patriots who perished on 
the British prison-ships at Wallabout, and whose bones 
bleached along the shores of the bay, remained un- 
buried. After many wasted appeals to Congress the 
members of Tammany Hall raised a sum sufficient for 
their honorable sepulcher. On the 26th of May, 1808, 
a solemn funeral pageant passed through the short 
streets of old New York and crossed to the Brooklyn 
shore. There, in a vault in Hudson Avenue near York 
Street, the bones of those who found death at Walla- 
bout were laid to rest. 

When civil war descended in a red flood in the early 
sixties, the " Tammany Eegiment," or Forty-second 
New York Volunteers, organized in May, 18G1, was 
under arms with the earliest. Of twelve hundred and 
ten who followed Colonel Kennedy to the South, the 
report at the close showed: killed, ninety-two; wounded. 



TAMMANY AND 0BTT7SBUBG. 133 

three hundred and twenty-eight; missing, two hundred 
and ninety-eight. There was no better record; none 
more valorous than the soldiers of Tammany. They 
bore the brunt of Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, 
the decisive movement of the decisive battle of the war. 
To their honor, on September 2-1, 1891, Tammany Hall, 
through a committee of three whereof Mr. James J. 
Martin was chairman — himself a brave soldier of that 
strife — erected a monument on Gettysburg field. It 
occupies ground held by the Tammany Regiment dur- 
ing the pitch of the fight. 

Tammany is the oldest and most powerful self-con- 
stituted political association in the world. It began 
with the government itself, being founded within a 
fortnight after Washington took the oath of office as 
the first President of the United States. The organi- 
zation took place at the old City Hall in Nassau Street 
near Wall, a spot within sound of Washington's voice 
as he spoke his first Presidential words to his country- 



X. 

BALLOT DUTIES, 

Stand to it, noble pikenien, 

And look you round about, 
And shoot you right, you bowmen. 

And we will keep them out. 

— Brave Willoughby. 

Thebe is ever the murmur of criticism to fill the 
querulous air against the politicians, the parties, and 
the " machines." The javelins of public censure are 
leveled unremittingly at the three. There is justice in 
these complaints; albeit, when the subject has last 
elucidation, there is to be clipped and sour sympathy for 
the complainants. Granted each violence of office, or 
crime of policy, that has been charged against govern- 
ment since government began. With the latest syl- 
lable the public is the one belaborable therefor. It 
isn't for King, and Kaiser, and Parliament, and Con- 
gress, and President that rods should soak in pickle; it 
is for those peoples who permit them, and in whose 
names and under whose hands they act their sundry 
villainies. The whole people, or even a majority of 
the whole, can proffer no demand which the Prince will 
decline. He will accede, not for his honesty, but for 
his fear. The royal motive, however, comes to be of 
light concern; it is the deed which counts. And the 
deed will as unfailingly respond to a united public as 
any shallop to any gale of wind. 



THE WELSHMEN'S PRINCE. 135 

It was in a day when the Welsh were not so wisely 
capable as now. Weak they were, compared with that 
monarch with whom they dealt, for he was bold and 
crafty as against their untaught ignorance. 

Yet the Welsh had one fixed thought in their heads; 
they would be ruled by none save him native-born of 
Wales. And thereupon the Welsh public — not a 
mighty host in that day — with its uncombed hair in its 
eyes, its rough attire, its savage feet shod with un- 
tanned hides, confronted Edward and shouted, " A 
native Prince! " Also, they, the Welsh, swore by their 
oaks that war they would until they had their way. 

Edward was wroth, for the blood of the Plantagenets 
was not the coolest strain in England. But Edward 
confronted a whole people, and was afraid. He piled 
his arms and a sort of truce succeeded. There was a 
lapse of a handful of months. Then Edward invited 
the Welsh chiefs and head-folk to the royal castle of 
Caernarvon. He gathered them into the great hall. 
When they had eaten and drunk, and the King observed 
that they gnawed their bones slowly and with dull in- 
difference, as ones surfeited, and that their bickers and 
wooden stoups of liquor were left long untouched on 
the board, he arose and inquired in tones of angry 
loudness if they were still of that mind to have a native 
Prince or war. 

It was like a tocsin-bell and acted as a summons. 
There was none of the Welsh so drunk nor dead with 
over-meat but was on his feet with the moment. They 
answered the King with much clattering of arms, and 
oral affirmations which were pregnant of storm. 
Drunk and sober, full and hungry, they stuck for their 
point to a Welshman. 



136 RICHARD CROKER. 

Edward was fain to smile even while his heart was 
hot with anger for them. Their attitude was one of 
high defiance; and defiance to a King is insult; and in- 
sult is the last thing your true-born King may stomach. 
But Edward swallowed his spleen, as rulers, whether 
elective or named of God, when faced by a whole pub- 
lic have ever done, and salving his hurt vanity with the 
thought, vox popuU, vox Dei est, passed into another 
chamber. 

Edward was organized to yield to the wild Welsh 
when they would not yield to him. A cry — a baby's 
cry — was heard; and the King came into the banquet 
hall with the infant in his arms. Scowling on his 
Welshmen as they made a curious crowd about him, he 
held his puling burden high so all might see, and 
shouted, Eich dyn! and so gave the Welsh a Prince, 
and the Prince a motto,with one and the same breath. 
It was but sorry Erse, that Eich dyn; still it meant. 
Here is your man, or strictly. Your man; and the 
assembled chiefs as they gazed on the first Prince of 
Wales, a Prince who had been to the trouble of a great 
journey to be born among their hills, felt the point of 
honor satisfied, and were at peace. A native Prince 
had been granted unto them. 

And as it was in the day of Edward and his Welsh, so 
is it now with you and your officers of state. The pub- 
lic may have aught that it demands; and if wrong of 
" machine," or party, or crime of place exists, it is sure 
proof that, whatever hypocrisy may say aloud or put in 
print on that subject, the public privily consents to, 
nay, fosters and flatters its existence. 

There is stern word to be said to publics concern- 
ing their treasons to themselves. It was a recent 



AND NOW THE CRITIC. 137 

day when a critic, who was also an officeholder, arose 
and made unto the world a harangue. It was in its 
nature a criticism of politics and politicians, and 
the critic bent himself to inform a bevy of callow stu- 
dents about to fly from that nest of learning, the uni- 
versity, and spake veraciously as follows: 

" Being an officeholder myself, I may be pardoned 
for saying that most of the men who are holding the 
offices and wielding authority will be forgotten before 
the grass has had time to grow over them; for they are 
not the great captains, they are not the leaders of our 
progress and of our civilization. Their vision is 
limited to the weather-vanes of public buildings. They 
never give the order for advance on any great question; 
they wait to be commanded to move, and then hesitate 
until assured that it is the voice of the majority call- 
ing to them. They wait until the leaders of thought 
have captured the stronghold of a wrong, and then they 
try to plant their flag over the ramparts that were 
stormed by others. As a rule, they are moral cowards, 
following the music wagon of their time, and holding 
the penny of immediate advantage so close to their 
eyes as to shut out the sunlight of eternal prin- 
ciples." 

There your critic gives one a true etching of the 
average officeholder — one selfish as an oyster, hun- 
gry as a shark, and as sublimely egotistical as either. 
He holds office not for its duties, but for its perquisites, 
and all else may go to moth and rust so that office be 
preserved to his lips and his pap-sucking does not 
perish from the earth. Like the gambler of the story, 
your officeholder cares not what happens, so it does not 
happen to him. One is glad our critic puts the case 



138 RICHARD CROKER. 

with plainness. Should he keep on talking in that 
strain he will tell much truth, and may even work some 
good. 

In this day, when we have plenty — and misuse it — 
when it is an era of abuse rather than of want, a critic 
should be more thought of than a projector. ^Tis a 
fat hour, rife of good things, opulent of the possible, 
heavy with conditions of knee-deep richness; and your 
critic to show a wrong, to indict an evil and pillory in- 
justice — in short, to object and carp and wield a lash of 
biting sarcasm — is of excellent importance. We of 
America don't need a William to found an empire, for 
we have an empire; our time calls for no Charlemagne 
to extend an empire, for we have enough; even a Wash- 
ington is no longer indispensable to our destinies, for 
our Revolution is secure. What we could use is a 
brigade of critics to act as whippers-in and keep our 
hounds of office to their duty and see to it that the 
honest, proper hunt of government sweeps ever on. 

It is good that you re-read the words of the critic 
printed before. You are a voter — a free citizen of this 
free land of ours. And while the critic draws a picture 
of your officers, he at the same time holds a mirror up 
to you. " The representative represents," and he in 
office is the reflex of the ones who put him there. Your 
officer is as natural to his constituents as your apple to 
its tree; and in his rottenness or his sound sweetness, 
he tells the story of his origin. Your officeholder is 
the creature of venal mud and mire the critic paints, 
but it is because of your choice, connivance, and con- 
struction. He is your fruit — your apple; and you must 
own him. He wouldn't be there and couldn't stay 
there, save for you. You w^ant him, and there he is; 



THE CRIMINAL PUBLIC. 139 

you want him corrupt, and behold him a nest and lair 
of foulness. 

Trul}', there will be a brood of hot, resentful 
turkey-heads to rail at this. They will heatedly dis- 
claim responsibility for your officeholder. It will avail 
them naught. The theory of this government is per- 
fect for its time; it is the practice that breaks down. 
And the practice of government begins with the citizen 
— with you who read this and contradict it. Who would 
there be to withstand you, if you struck in for reform 
and honesty in place? Your hands are not tied, your 
voice is not stifled, only as your own mean hopes 
and fears are found to bind and gag them. The path 
is plain to the feet of every voter, and runs open to the 
expression of his views until it touches the Courts, the 
Congress, and the White House. There are neither 
guards to detain nor walls to interrupt him. From the 
highest to the lowest, in primary and convention and 
at the polls; aye! in mass-meeting and by petition after- 
ward, your voter — you who read — may have word and 
weight, both in the selection and ordering of every 
tax-eater on the lists. 

When a man can do a thing, and doesn't do it, that's 
because he doesn't want to do it. If you didn't want a 
rogue in office, there would be none; if a monstrous 
policy offended you, it would disappear. Your officials, 
whatever they are, may at least claim you as their 
origin. If they are black, it's because you are black; 
and there's not one word which the critic said of them 
he couldn't say of you. A people — and that means 
you — gets invariably a government to wed with its 
deserts. Is it a tyranny, a monarchy, an aristocracy, 
an oligarchy, or a republic, one may be sure it 



140 RICHARD CROKER. 

fits neatly and nearly the merits or demerits of the folk 
over whom it has ward and sway. Be pure, and your 
government will be pure; be brave, it will have courage; 
be free, and freedom will abide in your high places and 
descend therefrom to the rabble least among you. Be 
dogs, and you will have dog-government — a kennel, a 
collar, a bone to gnaw, and a chain to clank. 

It is by no means sure that a dog-government isn't 
that government howled for, hunted, and desired by 
a huge fraction of our citizens who, if asked the 
question, would describe themselves as ones high- 
hearted and noble, and bold, free gentlemen withal! 
There be ever a moiety of folk who fear to be free. 
They don't feel safe unless they feel owned. They 
have — to pursue a simile suggested above — vastly the 
dog-nature. They need a man to form on and draw 
strength from, and to whom their trained, tamed 
natures may refer and turn for direction and defense. 
Half the world runs about hunting a master — seeking 
to be owned. It hasn't the courage to dwell in man- 
hood on life's fearless hills. Such folk can't be free. 
They are natural-born subjects — cringers from the 
cradle; so bound are they in their prostrate natures to 
have a king that they'd crown the town pump if noth- 
ing better offered. Yes, forsooth! the woods of our 
citizenship are full of these dog-folk. Did you ever 
observe a lost dog? how he skulks and yelps and, with 
craven tail coiled close between his abject legs, flies 
from a shadow? That's all because the dog is lost. 
He feels the desolation of being masterless — the hor- 
ror of the cur unowned. To-morrow you may meet 
him with one who has consented to his title. And he 
will prove a bold, insolent dog, and battle to the death 



JOHNSON ON PATRIOTISM. 141 

for black or for white, just as his master orders. There 
be those to call these servile submissions to wrong in 
government patriotism. It may be so. " And patriot- 
ism," said Johnson to the obsequious Boswell, " is the 
last refuge of a scoundrel." 

Keforms must ever begin with the people. Your 
officer of state will seldom fail to be as much the ill- 
monger as you concede him license. The demand for 
better things must come from the public. It has been 
thus through history. Whenever an ill condition was 
to be fought and conquered, the torch of truth and pro- 
test had first to be kindled at some obscure, lowly 
hearth. And once lighted and burning, it passed on 
and on, from hand to hand, until that torch traveled 
from low to high; and that which started with the 
peasant was last seized on by the prince. The people 
may have anything they demand. They have but to 
be true to themselves — which they seldom are. 

Whatever one calls his party politics, the name com- 
monly means no more than a screen for his self- 
interest. Doubtless there is a sordid logic which goes 
with money, and most folk consult their pocketbooks 
when deciding their public duty. If one be killing 
pigs, or building boats, or forging rotten armor plates, 
or loaning money, those public conditions, whether of 
war, or peace, or murder, or pillage, or liberty dead, or 
law defied, or constitution invaded and set at naught, 
which flow a profit to one's pocket are to one right, and 
those one will sustain. One does not care though a 
King be in the White House, and Satan himself that 
King, so that it add and swell one's bank account. One 
feels no further than the dollar, sees no further than 
the day. 



142 RICHARD CROKER. 

And what is true of the high is true of the middle 
and the low; what is true of the rich is true also of 
the poor. As blinded slaves of selfishness they stand 
abreast; each jostles the other as he crowds towards 
that mess of pottage for which his birthright is for sale. 
There's no such mighty difference between men; no one 
is far ahead nor far behind; the race of humanity striv- 
ing is fairly well bunched, and one might cover the field 
with a horse blanket. So-called politics, as expressed 
by the parties, wouldn't assay ten ounces of patriotism 
to the ton. It is but a mad business — a lunatic dance, 
and the piper is yet to be paid. And still the whole 
dinner of government, as it goes a-cooking, is under 
the palm of the public. 

That critic aforesaid has given a true picture of those 
who sit in your high places. He says they are thick, 
slow, timid, greedy, dishonest; and they are. And you 
don't like it? Then make your stand. Those officers 
will do anything, be anything, you say. Do you want 
your taxes less? they will lower them. Are you tired 
of tariff? they will reduce it to the flat levels of free 
trade. Do you long for silver? you shall have it. Or 
if you prefer gold, it is yours. Or say so, and you shall 
have both. Those pliant folk of place will put the ship 
of state about; they will sail to any compass point; or 
they will set a staysail and heave to, exactly as you — 
the public — demand. 

You — the public — are in fault for whatever goes 
forward in office. You have the whole tangle in your 
lap, to mar or mend it as you please. Officers are a 
stunted litter; from pathmaster to president they are 
mere warts and pimply excrescences on the body politic, 
which chance and the secretion of this and that poor 



THE WORKINOMAN. 143 

humor have forced into a more or less inflamed and 
hectic exaltation. And you — the public — may instantly 
have your will of all or any of them to make them go, 
or stay, or do. No; there should be no high belief of any 
instant, lightning-like mutations for the better; and 
good comes slowly and seems shod with lead. Affairs 
will trundle onwards in much the same old villain 
way of bad. But, inspired of the critic's view, it does 
one good to say these things and leaves one's mind 
relieved. 

There is no uncommon outlook for a better condi- 
tion in any pose the labor element shall take. The 
masses are as full of treason as the classes, and sell 
out for less. The so-called workingman, as he pre- 
sents himself in politics, is not a spectacle of hope. 
There is but one greater fool than the workingman, 
and that is the fool he works for. Both are the 
worst of Esaus and fairly contend with one another 
as to which shall be more deeply deluded by the Jacob 
of politics as now is. The public is on the bridge 
when all is said and done, and it is the public's fault 
when the nation is on the rocks. You — the public — 
should never forget as you gaze on an officeholder that 
in him, whether he be sound or foul, you see your- 
self revealed as in a looking-glass. Your President, 
for instance, — whoever he is or may hereafter be, — 
is but a pocket mirror of the people he presides 
over. 

It is fair-faced and honest as a question why such 
often ill is spoken of Tammany Hall. And since I am 
no member of that organization, mine should be as just 
a pencil to spell an answer as any other. If my words 
should sound for Tammany's defense, at least they are 



144 RICHARD CROKER. 

from the general grandstand and not from any rank of 
partisanshijD. 

Tammany from the first has stood for the rights of 
man rather than the privileges of money. The rights 
of property are second to the rights of humanity in the 
teachings of Tammany Hall. This is and was as 
should be. Tammany Hall was and is made up, in 
the grand aggregate of its membership, of poor 
folk — those whose craft is of the hands. With ninety 
thousand names on its tallies the collected private 
riches of Tammany's whole membership would not 
reach the single figure of any one of a half dozen 
fortunes which dwell in this town. And as nothing 
of the East is fashionable which does not found on 
money, Tammany, as was before explained, is unfash- 
ionable. And what thing of New York City earns 
or heirs the epithet of unfashion is siunmarily de- 
nounced and spat upon and as if it were Crime's self. 

Moreover, the evil told of Tammany is not the relation 
of the common voice; it is ever the partisan word of an 
enemy. Tammany has, and since the first has had, two 
natural foes. There is the party legitimately of oppo- 
sition; once the Federal, later the Whig, and now the 
Republican, And next there is the party of the Mug- 
wump. These two influences are to fling furious and 
never-ceasing calumniation against Tammany Hall. 

Nor should fault be digged for. Such verbal siege 
and storming are by nature's own decree. It is the 
law. Politics is mere war, wanting the incident of 
blood. In real war one might speak compliment of 
one's foes; it would reflect self-credit as a word mag- 
nanimous, and never dull the falchion's edge for that. 
But in politics — as conducted humanly — one may not 



THE MUGWUMP GOOD. 145 

give good report 'of one's enemy; for since politics is 
only a war of words — the balloting being indeed but 
a counting of the slain — to speak well of an opposition 
would be half equal to surrender. Wherefore is Tam- 
many, naturally and incessantly, the subject of assault. 
And as naturally and incessantly the chief of Tam- 
many, being presently Eichard Croker, is selected and 
vehemently arrowed against as the center of the butt. 
On its part, Tammany retorts similarly against its 
assailants; and as result — as has been for all time true 
of true politics — one does not hear ten words of honesty 
from any side. Each party sits up of nights brewing 
mendacity against the other two; and then devotes the 
next day to feeding therewith all willing ears. 

There is a born reasonableness in the Republican at- 
tack on Tammany. That party, the grandchild of the 
Federal organization of a century ago, is, as one should 
say, innocently, or perhaps the better word is properly, 
in the field. This is not true of the party-Mugwump. 
The presence — nay, the existence — of the Mugwump is 
exotic. One is by no means sure, however, that your 
Mugwump is not an excellent institution of Providence. 
Of course, one speaks of the bred and pure-strain Mug- 
wump, and not of those others spurious, who for prac- 
ticed villainies, whether private or public, have been 
drummed and driven from the divers camps of politics 
to the music of the " Rogue's March." Your true 
Mugwump serves felicitously the purpose of a critic; 
and a critic of politics, as we have lately beheld, is a 
desider9,tum. 

Your Mugwump, like poets and others the plain 
whelps of Genius breeding, is born and not made. 
And some are greater and more brilliant of mug- 



146 RICHARD CROKER. 

■wumpery than others, just as one finds in Byron a 
more scintillant poet than in Hood. By one sign 
one may know them; and that, too, whether the 
individual Mugwump considered be of the giant or of 
the pygmy tribe. Ever is your Mugwump one whose 
education is in excess of his capacity. Your Mugwump 
is a quart of whisky in a pint flask. Or he is a No. 8 
foot in a No. 6 shoe. Also, his policy is to leap from a 
window rather than descend by the stair. Being 
critics, no brace of Mugwumps may be found who 
agree. And, being of a reboant herd, the uproar of their 
constant bicker resounds afar. Withal mugwumpery 
is brittle, as moods of self-fraud ever are, and breaks 
into many pieces. There are the mental Mugwump, 
the moral Mugwump, and the common Mugwump of 
political commerce. 

That validity of purpose and good-possible of mug- 
wumpery might gain display with the story of a con- 
versation as it befell among three. The trio were of 
the genus Mugwump, species, mental. They discussed 
matter, extant and apparent to feel and smell and 
taste, as, for specimen, the earth. 

" Matter is universal," remarked the first Mugwump 
sagely. 

" Not so," quoth Number Two, and whose mien was 
the mien of a trained sapiency — "not so; matter is 
diversal." 

" Pardon me," observed the third, and ho was of 
a sagacity with the others — " pardon me, my friends; 
matter does not exist." 

And these Mugwumps of the mental were dining as 
deeply as ever dined farm-hand, while rhetoric found 
tireless coinage. 



MUaWUMPERT DEBATES. 14V 

As one gazed and heard, it was forced on one 
that this dinner and discussion of three sides — 
this isosceles triangle of mugwumpery — would find 
parallel in the collection of three wise fleas on the back 
of that dog whom they honored with their inhabi- 
tation. 

" Dog is universal," cries the first. 

" Dog is diversal," shouts the second. 

" Pardon me^, gentlefleas," breaks in the third — he 
speaks thickly with a mouthful of dog — " pardon me; 
dog does not exist." 

Your common, practical, everyday intelligence would 
pitch its camp in perfect comfort on the fact of dog; it 
would go no further. Not so the Mugwump. Discov- 
ering dog, he leaps flashily to dog's highest point, and 
from there goes ballooning off and aloft to the utmost 
spaces of conjecturings. Your Mugwump declaims and 
chops logic. He splits hairs, and then re-splits the 
splints. 

Mugwumps are not gregarious. They occur no more 
in flocks than do eagles — or owls. When discovered in 
council or convention, as they sometimes are, one is to 
observe that your Mugwump is not gathered unto his 
kind in any spirit of solidarity or fraternal purpose. 
Each Mugwump attends, riding his own hobby, and 
from motives self-exhibitory. 

Your Mugwump of politics is solely critical; he is 
not initiative, has nothing of plan nor of idea where- 
with to stoke and fire-up a future. Your political 
Mugwump is a fault-finder; and born with his face to 
the past, he never turns him about. He passes his 
existence, as Butler once said, " like a man riding back- 
ward in a carriage; he never sees a thing until it's by." 



148 RICHARD CROKER. 

'Tis a harmless and not ill-meaning mammal, however; 
and it is by no means settled that in his part of fault- 
finder your Mugwump does not serve in abatement of 
that roguery which goes so frequently with the occu- 
pation of place. Elections at best are but exercises of 
dark depression and dispirit; the one thing therein 
certain is that, whosoever may win, the people will 
lose; and it is not unlikely that, with such the situa- 
tion, your Mugwump comes prettily for alleviation 
and as counter-irritant to general ill. He produces 
nothing; but he may serve to some least degree in 
prevention of the wrong, 

Tammany — and the word in the Indian signifies 
" affable " — has been in days preterite too affable for its 
best standing in " society." It was ever friend to the 
common borrel folk. It was not of the dandies, not of 
the macaroni, and did not smell of musk and attar of 
roses and Fifth Avenue. It has lacked sadly in a spirit 
for the exclusive; and so failing of patricianism, it has 
failed also of ton. Tammany has, by these traits 
of the common, become vulgar. Therefore it abides 
the natural victim of never-flagging slander on the 
essenced and fashionable parts of our local aristocrats. 
And be it knowTi that your nobility slanders with skill. 
Vilification is the born weapon of an aristocrat, just 
as is poison of a Turk. 

Tammany is a " machine " in politics. Likewise is 
its Republican opponent. Also, there is a Mugwump 
" machine." But of this last it must be said that in the 
congress of its parts there is so much of misfit and 
want of unity, and again such a beggarly absence of 
both oil and steam, that it comes to be a ramshackle 
contrivance of neither force nor direction, and falling 



TAMMANT IS NATURAL. 14d 

at once into its hundred incongruous pieces with the 
earliest shiver of real effort. 

Whatever of effective politics exists in this town — 
and for that word, in the nation — whether of Tam- 
many or an opposition is distinctly the politics of the 
" machine." One sees more of the " machine " in the 
politics of a city than in regions rural. The " ma- 
chine," in its best flourishings and flowerings, is in- 
digenous to urban soil. 

In either the theory or the ethic of politics the 
" machine " cannot find defense; in the practice of 
politics, and peculiarly in cities, the " machine " cannot 
find dispense. That is because both theory and ethic 
deal with man as he should be, while practice deals with 
man as he is. And hence the " machine." 

It is worth one's attention that your " machine " is 
not artificial; it constructs itself, and comes as product 
of conditions. Tammany Hall, be assured, would not 
have lived almost a century and a quarter, were it not 
of vitality inborn and of itself. Tammany will never 
be " uprooted " — the common phrase of its foes. One 
would as easily " uproot " the East River. The roots 
of Tammany, and with them the roots of the two 
counter political " machines," are the roots of the town 
itself. The day of the town's destruction will be the 
day of theirs. Each will ever bear the others company. 

Cities are inventions — the inventions of the farms. 
Being invented, cities in their turn invent. And one 
inevitable upcome of a city is " machinism " in poli- 
tics. Observe, also, as proof of a parentage; there are 
"machine" vestiges discoverable in bucolic politics; and 
among your agriculturists there dwell shadowy Tam- 
many Hails of hoop-pole characteristics. The seeds 



150 mCBARD CROKBR. 

of the " machine *' are in the natural man. Hive or 
herd him into a city, and behold the swelling and the 
bursting and the sprouting of that seed. And the 
blossom is such as Tammany. 

There is an iron constraint to be the attribute of 
cities. They crowd one's morals and one's politics just 
as they crowd one's person; and even Freedom herself 
must maintain her hands in her pockets, and sit with 
knees clewed to chin, while in your city. Folk are 
thereby fretted into the anarchistic. The " machine " 
— even the poor " machine " of the incubated Mug- 
wump — has its good. It is in perpetual arms political; 
and it acts as coast-guard of American institutions. 
The " machine " makes captive the ignorant, the an- 
archistic, and the unrepublican, as he lands. It ties 
him hand and foot with its discipline and makes him 
harmless. As a suppressive influence, moving for pub- 
lic order and to the subjection of what else might be a 
mob spirit and rise to become those small first gusts of 
violence which unchecked conflate as riots, the " ma- 
chine " is to be extolled. 

One cause of a disfavor of Tammany, and likewise of 
all " machines," — that is the disfavor felt for them in 
the land at rural large, — lies in the native hatred of the 
country for things urban. The farms dislove the 
cities; the country glowers at the town. Clay, in 
his day, failed to understand this sentiment in 
its existence. In the third Jackson campaign. Clay 
it was who made Jackson's attack upon the United 
States Bank an issue. Clay reflected that the bank 
was a great Pennsylvania corporation. Clay counted 
on that State coming to the rescue of its child. 
But Clay was all abroad. The United States Bank 



PHILIP HONE'S DIARY. 151 

was a Philadelphia rather than a Pennsylvania com- 
pany. And the country hated the town. The Penn- 
sylvania rustic went against the Philadelphia-United 
States Bank, as against that one dear foe for whom he 
had trained and waited. And he beat it like a carpet. 

This resentment of matters metropolitan, burns 
in every country heart. Massachusetts is opposed to 
Boston, New York to the city of New York, Pennsyl- 
vania to Philadelphia, Maryland to Baltimore, Illinois 
to Chicago, and Missouri to St. Louis. The country 
contemns the town; and this feeling, even though he 
who entertains it be of kindred politics with Tammany, 
lends credulous believing ear to whatever of lie the 
malice or policy of Tammany's enemies may forge to 
its unfavor. 

Tammany was from its birth-bed a disturber of 
Money and of an aristocracy. This was true when in 
Adams' White House time it toasted France; when 
later it with Burr defeated Hamilton, destroyed his 
party and plowed and sowed its site with salt. It was 
true of Jackson's day; it's as true of this. 

Old Philip Hone's diary, a personal journal kept 
during the thirties, gives one a murmur of how Tam- 
many was disesteemed by the nobility current of sixty 
years and more ago. Hone was rich and easy-going; a 
worthy old gentleman, indeed, who had been mayor, 
and was then retired from both business and politics, 
and who with a certain Dr. Hosack — in attendance, 
thirty years before, on the Burr-Hamilton duel — di- 
vided and did the society honors of the town. The 
worthy Hone's strictures on Tammany Hall found 
birth in this fashion: The Patroon Eensselaer owned an 
estate, embracing about eight hundred square miles, 



152 RICHARD CROKER. 

near Albany. This estate was occupied by thousands 
of tenant-farmers and mechanics, for the most part 
Dutch. The old Patroon died; this was in 1839. The 
tenants, who had been waiting for his death, arose as 
one. They informed the heir, a Stephen Rensselaer, 
that he was not to patroon it over them. They would 
buy each tenant his farm or his house at its value, but 
they would pay no further rent. Neither would they 
submit to evictions. The new, young, little Patroon, 
full of the pride of inherited millions, refused the de- 
mands of his peasantry. They would get no fee simple 
from him. They would pay rent or leave. There- 
upon the mutinous Dutch peasantry deeply armed 
themselves; whereat the young Patroon cast himself 
and his griefs upon the bosom of the Governor and 
sobbed for troops. 

It was before an era of Coeur d'Alenes, and Pull- 
mans, and Standard Oils, and money-festered chief 
executives, and the Governor was in no hurry to 
send troops. He would wait a bit; things might cool. 
They cooled. There was no spilling of honest, though 
turbulent, Dutch blood. The young Patroon sold to 
the tenants, and peace prevailed in that Albany region 
roundabout. That is the story; here's what our excit- 
able old diarist said of that turmoil and the attitude 
thereon assumed of Tammany Hall: 

"November, 1839. A most outrageous revolt has 
broken out among the tenants of the late Patroon, 
General Rensselaer, in the neighborhood of Albany, of 
a piece with the disorganizing spirit which overspreads 
the land like a cloud [the spirit of Andrew Jacksonism] 
and daily increases in darkness. The tenants of the 



WAR ON A PATROON. 153 

manor of Van Rensselaer, which is in extent about 
twenty miles by forty miles , . . have risen en 
masse. . . Dec. 12. The disturbances in the Rensse- 
laer manor are in a fair way of settlement without 
calling in the aid of troops. . . An attempt was made 
during the course of the affair by the profligate politi- 
cians [Democratic] who are in the ascendant in this 
devoted city, to get up a meeting of Tammany Hall to 
express their horror at the thought of troops being em- 
ployed to shed the blood of their fellow citizens; and 
to raise party capital by condemning the measures 
adopted by the Governor; but this cankered sore of 
Jacobinical corruption [Tammany Hall] did not come 
to a head. Their hearts were black enough. . ." 

There, in word and phrase, reason and conclusion, is a 
fair and proper example of the fault found and charges 
made concerning Tammany Hall. And thus it has 
ever been, and thus it is. Tammany Hall is made up 
of " profligate politicians," it is in all and sweeping 
things a " cankered sore of Jacobinical corruption," 
and of those to form its membership it is written 
that " their hearts were black enough " — and all be- 
cause Tammany Hall would meet and " express their 
horror at the thought of troops being employed to shed 
the blood of their fellow citizens." 

Unless one seeks to ship a cargo of untruth, one 
should take sedulous guard as against stories and tales 
anent Tammany Hall. They will have origin among 
Tammany's foes — not the safest historians — and be 
commonly the offput of some Grimm of the Mugwumps, 
or some Hans Christian Andersen of the Republicans. 
Your world general believes too much and too easily. 



154 RICHARD CROKER. 

It should break itself of this habit of the credulous. If 
the world would but think with one-half the assiduity 
wherewith it listens, it would not so often be cast for 
the "Simple Simon" role. The world does not so much 
as understand and know itself. The world has a belief 
that it prefers to laugh. The world is in error; it pre- 
fers to shudder. There is a joy in dread not found in 
simple pleasure. The world would sooner wonder than 
learn; it delights in amazement rather than instruction. 
And with such doting care does it conserve its wonder, 
so zealously does it resent any subtraction from its 
amazement, that his reputation is made unsafe and his 
name despised who seeks to brush aside even such as the 
myths of Pocahontas, of Tell, of St. George and the 
Dragon, or of King Arthur and his sword Excalibur. 
It isn't religious heat that stands wrath-eyed when one 
disputes the story of the prophet, the she-bears, and 
the devoured gamins. It is that nursing solicitude, a 
first trait of humanity, for the Horrible-wonderful 
which comes screaming to its protection. 

Verily! the world believes too readily and with 
not enough of challenge. The surest countersign to 
the confidence of folk is a tale of horror or wonder. 
And believing a story of the marvelous, the world, go- 
ing a next step, is quick to name it miraculous and from 
the blue above, or what further mystic thing for an 
origin the relater declares. One touch of the acid of 
common thought would show of these miracles and 
wonder tales their bogus character. 

Take the duel between David and Goliath. That 
victory of David comes glancing through the centuries. 
Hall-marked as a miracle, none has arisen to doubt 
nor to discover the foolish falsity of that marking. 



DAVID AND OOLIATH. 155 

Pause for one moment; bend tlie brow of considera- 
tion. By partial way of a thought-help gaze on Moreau's 
" David "; a statue which has fame. What is 
he? A young, trained athlete in swell of power 
and swiftest accuracy. His artillery of the sling 
is wrapped to his strong wrist. He can hurl, there- 
from a pebble the size of an Qgg, and to weigh a 
pound, with the force of a bullet and the certainty of 
English archery. Alert, nervous, strung like a bow, 
and with the pliant strength of a sapling, stands David; 
courage undauntable beats and bounds in his heart. 

Observe Goliath; the ox-head creature who has 
challenged David. Here is his description taken 
from first mouths. " And he had an helmet of 
brass upon his head, and he was armed with a coat of 
mail; and the weight of the coat was five thousand 
shekels of brass. And he had greaves of brass upon 
his legs, and a target of brass between his shoulders. 
And the staff of his spear was like a weaver's beam; and 
his spear's head weighed six hundred shekels of iron." 
Later, when David beheads him, one learns that he has 
a sword. 

Contrast the two. Our officious giant, a lubber 
with a horse-load of brass on his back, and another 
of iron in his hand, shuffling with slow and snail-like 
difficulty, and never a weapon save clumsy sword and 
clumsier spear. And neither of them lethal at a quar- 
tette of yards. David, lean, clean, and hawk-swift, free 
and afar off; equal with his sling to death and doom 
within a radius of a score of rods. Is one to find the 
amazing-unexpected in the ending? Goliath, fatuous 
Philistine! never owned a chance; he was as good as 
dead the moment the match was made. 



156 RICHARD CROKER. 

Tammany Hall, as a "machine," is perfect. With 
an enlistment, as stated, of ninety thousand, it has 
thirty-five " leaders," one from each assembly district; 
these make the great layer of power. The thirty-five 
" leaders " select a finance committee of five; these five 
name their chairman; and that chairman is the general 
in command of the organization. Richard Croker is 
the present chief; John Kelly was his predecessor. 
Each in his turn deserved his elevation, for together 
they rescued Tammany, after years of conflict with 
that ogre of the parties, from beneath the feet of 
Tweed. 

Every Tammany " leader " is a subchief in his dis- 
trict. Under him he has a " captain " in each election 
precinct of his district; and each of these "captains" 
has a little " captain " under his orders in every city 
block of his precinct. Thus is the pyramid of Tam- 
many power put up. First a base of ninety thousand 
privates; then a " captain " for each city block; then 
a " captain " for each voting precinct; then a " leader " 
for each assembly district; then a finance com- 
mittee of five; then Eichard Croker. Aside from 
the ninety thousand enlisted men, who represent 
a " regular " army in politics, there are full two hun- 
dred and twenty thousand other voters held within 
the harness of Tammany influence. The organi- 
zation has its main home in Fourteenth Street; its 
property there is worth easily a million of dollars. 
Then there is in Fifth Avenue near Fiftieth Street the 
Democratic Club — practically a Tammany Club — with 
a membership of three thousand, with real estate to the 
value of three hundred thousand dollars, and of money 
an equal amount in bank. Each " leader " has in his 



THE TAMMANY FINANCES. 157 

district a club and a clubhouse; the latter often of a 
cost to touch one hundred thousand dollars. 

To conduct a campaign Tammany Hall expends about 
three hundred thousand dollars. This money is given 
out the night before an election; each " leader " having 
his share. The wage and the number of election 
workers are fixed. There are to be ten men in each 
voting precinct to wear the badge and get the people to 
the polls. These receive five dollars each, or fifty dol- 
lars to a precinct, or over seventy thousand dollars for 
this one item alone covering the entire town. Then 
there are carriages to bring the lame, the halt, and the 
blind. There are halls to rent, and fireworks to pur- 
chase, and stands to put up, and trucks to hire for 
" orators," in the three or four weeks of a canvass. Told 
and counted, the over-all expense clambers to three 
hundred thousand dollars. This sum is not hard to 
get. Contributions come from every quarter; some of 
them secret and not caring to be known. 

" Sometimes we contribute to one party, sometimes 
to the other, sometimes to both," said Havemeyer of the 
Sugar Trust to Gray's Senate Committee a quintette of 
years ago. 

This practice still obtains among the great com- 
panies; and the point — strange as it may come to ears 
used to another tale — the point with Tammany Hall 
is the point of not getting too much. There are hun- 
dreds to whom a part of their subscriptions is returned 
as " too large," or " more than the organization needs." 

Following an election, what money is left is generally 
given to a charity or to some cause of worth. Within 
the past four years there have in this manner gone, to 
the poor of this town, forty thousand dollars; to the 



158 RICHARD CROKER. 

cause of Cuba, forty thousand dollars; almost as much 
to the Galveston sufferers; almost the same sum to 
rear a monument to Parnell, and to pay the mortgage 
on the Parnell estates in Ireland and save them to the 
family of that dead liberator. Tammany keeps no 
books; there's no way of discovering who gives or how 
much; the funds are banked in the name of a treasurer 
who acts as secretary to draw checks and aid the work 
of the finance committee. 

That is the money, and in a sense, the military side 
of Tammany Hall. There is still another, and it is this 
latter which makes it well-nigh impregnable in local 
affairs. Tammany is a political organization one day 
in the year: it is a charitable-benevolent-fraternal or- 
ganization three hundred and sixty-five. Does a brick- 
layer, or carpenter, or laborer, or even such as a clerk 
or a bookkeeper find himself minus work, he goes to his 
" leader." One may meet from fifty to three hundred 
of these out-of-work folk waiting in front of every 
" leader's " house each morning. And the " leader," 
and his " election captains " under him, make utmost 
effort to find places for these applicants. The 
" leaders " haunt contractors and builders, and they 
trade favors for places. This exchange extends to 
street railway companies, express companies, and scores 
of other enterprises. The man offered must be good 
and capable of his duties; that is what the company or 
the contractor demands. Satisfaction achieved in these 
directions, the "leader" may send the candidate. 

On their parts the contractors and companies call on 
the " leaders," Avhom they have thus aided with situ- 
ations for folk out of work, to gain them what of 
leniency, forbearance, or favor they may require from 



VISIT THE POLICE COURT. l5d 

time to time of city departments such as the street, the 
park, the health, and variously the other boards among 
which the control of the town is lodged. In positions 
other than ones of office, it is not an overstatement to 
say that Tammany Hall places and keeps thirty-five 
thousand souls to that work wherewith tTiey earn their 
daily bread. 

Again, go into one of the numberless police courts of 
the town. " Ten dollars or twenty days on the 
Island," mumbles the magistrate, and the poor wretch 
is shoved aside without two bits in the present, and the 
workhouse filling the future dead-ahead. Just as you 
feel your sympathies at work for the puny malefactor 
who for want of ten dollars must serve in captivity for 
twenty days, a cool person, well clad and business-like, 
pushes up to the clerk. He doesn't give the prisoner 
a look; often he doesn't know him, save by word of his 
undercaptains. " Figure up that man's fine and costs," 
he observes to the clerk. It is done; it is then paid by 
the cool man, who walks away with no more of notice 
to the liberated one than mayhap a nod of short indif- 
ference. It is all cold and commonplace as a brief 
piece of political business. The cool person who pays 
feels no glow as one who does a charit}^ for he performs 
the ceremony, on an average, full two hundred times a 
month. Nor does the beneficiary of his interference 
boil vnth any turbulence of obligation. It is what he 
looked for. The "leader" pays the fine with the 
thought that our soiled and broken gentleman, in 
present peril of the Island, will vote " right " next 
time. And the soiled one does, when the time arrives. 
And why should he not? It is the commonest, kind- 
liest animalism to be friend to one's friends. 



160 mCBARD CROKER. 

There is one last feature of a Tammany political edu- 
cation that is worth a note. It is meant to guard 
the Tammany vote from purchase by its million- 
owning enemies. It has quiet teaching among the 
lower stratum, — and the " precinct captains " are, com- 
monly speaking, the teachers, — that it is a brave, good 
deed, by any hook or crook, to get all the money from 
the opposition that the rich and credulous foe vnW part 
withal. Promise to vote the opposition ticket, promise 
anything, and get the money; that is the quiet instruc- 
tion. Then break the promise and vote with Tam- 
many Hall. 

" We have to do this," explained a " leader," " in 
order to protect ourselves. The opposition is sure to 
try and buy our votes. Now if we frightened these 
' sell-outs,' and led them to think we'd call it a crime 
if we found them with Mugwump money in their hands, 
or discovered them in close confab with a Republican, 
we'd lose a lot of men. They would take the other 
fellow's money; and then they would feel guilty and be 
afraid to come back to us. And there you are. Two 
to one they would make good, and vote the Mugwump 
or Republican ticket. So we teach people of the ' sell- 
out ' stripe that, so far from finding fault with them 
for getting money from the opposition, it's the acme of 
cunning and a feather in their caps. The result is that 
not one of them can be bought. At the same time they'll 
take the money off you so fast you'll catch cold. They 
return and brag to us of the hauls they make. I've 
seen time and again dozens of my own men, \^^th Mug- 
wump or Republican badges on, ' working ' at the polls. 
No; of course they were all right. They voted with me 
each time. But they took as much of the other side's 



BARTLEJ CAMPBELLS APOTHEGM. 161 

money as was handed out. It's the only way for us to 
keep from losing twenty thousand votes in this town. 
Make them understand that it's all right to take the 
other fellow's money; that you like them the better 
for it." 

Well, well, well! One isn't sure whether one has 
been in the mud or on the grass during the last ten 
minutes. Decision, doubtless, as in other matters, will 
wait on the point of view. " Fame and infamy! " ob- 
served Bartley Campbell in his play of " Clio " — and 
the great dramatist was in a frame of wisdom — " fame 
and infamy! It takes a sound philosopher to mark 
the line that separates the two." 



XL 



ONE HUNDKED YEARS AGO. 

Necessity, thou best of Peace-makers, 
As well as surest prompter of invention, 
Help us to composition ! 

— Anonymous. 

Heavens! how one hates to begin! One's mind is 
like unto some truant fowl of the air, with spread 
pinions circling and whirling, and whirling and circling, 
without being brought to perch on anything. Work is 
a bore and tasks are loathly matters. And to write a 
book is to work. Still, why should there be such toil 
and travail thereover? Is it better to build a book 
than to make a coat? Your tailor would not say so. 
Also, he might exclaim that those who make only 
books run but starved bills with him. 

Yet a book is a good thing; that is a good book. It 
shall abide a keener, longer wearing than a coat. 
" Allah's three greatest gifts," says the Mussulman — 
" Allah's three greatest gifts to man are a horse, a 
woman, and a book." The last is the best, and that 
false Paynim should have given it the right of the line, 
A book is best; one may take it up with no fear of a 
runaway, and put it aside without proceedings in court. 
A book makes life worth living. Without it the play 
might scarce be worth the candle. One's mind goeth 
forth as the dove from the ark and findeth no rest for 
the sole of its foot. The book arises and offers that 

1C2 



FOPPimWN ON BOOKS. 163 

lacking repose. True! there be those to dislike a book 
others to deride it. Such last was Lord Foppington in' 
^anbrugh's "Relapse"; a most witty and licentious 
comedy, this last, and therefore one much dog-eared 
and worn of its leaves. 

Said my Lord Foppington: " To mind the inside of a 
book IS to entertain one's self with the forced product 
of another man's brain. T^ow I think a man of quality 
and breeding may be much amused with the natural 
sprouts of his own." 

Lord Foppington never read a book; perhaps, how- 
ever he solaced himself, when not on the painted 
peruked, and powdered warpath of his fopperies, with 
meditation. And meditation, like a book, belongs 
Tinder the caption of good things. One may not be a 
philosopher, but one-all of us, in amiable verity-mav 
be a meditator; which is to be a dwarf philosopher in a 
dwindled way. Your meditator, be he puny has 
thoughts m knickerbockers; your philosopher is the 
grown Anak of thought, profound of mental chest and 
a clothyard wide i' th' shoulders. 

Work, work, work! and what is the call for it? Man 
IS spurred to work by the sharp and lancing rowel of 
his wants. And what are his wants? Food and sleen 
and warmth and shelter-his board and his bed and 
his clothes and his roof. He who toils beyond the ac- 
quirement of these works foolish overtime. 'Sure folk 
do. They go on heaping millions on millions— Pelion 
upon Ossa to reach what gods they know not-and 
ache sweat, and swear with the pain of the effort 
withal Once I asked a multiplied millionaire-he was 
one who m the name of nitrate had exploited nations, 
and, hke some weasel of commerce, sucked the yolk from 



164 RICHARD CROKER. 

the egg of more than one South American state — who 
at the age of sixty-five, with digestion spoiled and slum- 
bers broken by robberies feared as well as robberies 
planned — he called them " business " — was still in the 
acrid thick of his dollar-getting, why he so struggled 
for more money? I recounted his age and his millions, 
and his dissatifying dyspepsia. 

" Why do you," quoth I — " why do you chase dollars 
when you have four-hundred-fold enough for every day 
that's left you, and the most extravagant gilding 
thereof? Why do you do this thing? " 

" That calls for reflection to make the answer," and 
my man of many millions swung to the tiller of thought. 
" If you will tell me," he continued presently, " why a 
dog will chase the hundredth rabbit, I'll reply to your 
question. The dog doesn't need the rabbit. He will 
even abandon it dead on the ground to any who may 
find and care to lift it, once it be overtaken by him and 
killed. The dog drops it from his memory when, cap- 
tured and slain, he lets it fall from his mouth. Yet 
that dog, at the heel of the hunt or at the last of his 
life, will chase his ultimate rabbit — and it may be his 
millionth — with as much of anxiety to overtake it as 
though it were the first he'd ever seen. As I stated; 
when you tell me why your dog pursues that last rab- 
bit which he doesn't need, I'll explain to you why your 
millionaire struggles for that other dollar that he can- 
not want." And then he lifted up his voice and 
laughed. It was shrill and high and hard, that laugh 
— a lupine laugh. So have I heard a wolf — that gray 
" business man " — laugh in the still midnight of our 
Western plains. 

One may observe here, what I didn't say to my mil- 



THE ARROW IN THE AIR. 165 

lionaire, and that is that while his foregoing may be 
called and indeed may be an explanation, it is not one 
which should prevent the issuance of a commission of 
lunacy based on that shattered moral intelligence of 
which his dollar-chasing, when dollars are grown use- 
less to him, would amply evidence the existence. 

One works to live, and life is no such lesson of suc- 
cess at best as to justify any heart-breaking or nerve- 
gnawing strife for its propping. Life is but an arrow 
in the air. Shot by some sightless archery of nature, 
each of us is projected upward towards the skies. 
None reaches them; some soar higher and some with 
weaker flight, and each comes clattering back to bury 
himself in the earth as if the grave were the bull's-eye 
aimed at. Or life is as a flying fish, that springs from 
the coastless ocean of the infinite, and skims and squat- 
ters for fifty or mayhap a hundred feet along the 
surface, to plump at the last and forever into some bil- 
low of oblivion. 

But whether, in the fact of one's life, one is compara- 
ble with an arrow, or a flying fish, or with some addled 
spaniel which chases its tail and so gives one an exhibi- 
tion of much motion with no progress, one can never be 
more than content. There was a well-lined genius 
yclept Lubbock, a Sir John he was, who wrote a 
volume, the " Pleasures of Life." And Lubbock did 
very well for one who missed his purpose. Pleasure 
pivots and centers on a good stomach, and Lubbock 
didn't lay stress enough on that fact. Happiness 
comes from within, when one talks of a birth, and once 
the four cardinal demands of food and warmth and 
clothes and roof are replied to, will never be far away. 
Surely, happiness does not depend on much money, and 



166 RICHARD CROKER. 

too often finds in riches its murderer. How do I know? 
Walk out and look about you; Third Avenue is having 
a better time than Fifth. Happiness has no purse; 
and so, to be alliterative, you find misery in a man- 
sion while hilarity hails you from a hut. 

But, alas and alack! one must pull up. Posting and 
pounding ahead on the courser of one's shaggy, lum- 
bering, thick-legged, uncurried fancy may be very well, 
but it in no sort shortens one's task. One is no nearer 
the heels of this volume than one was an hour ago. It 
is wiser, since work one must, to regather about the 
subject of Tammany Hall, and commit one's self to 
currents of narrative which count for a shortening 
of this voyaging. 

Tammany Hall may with strict justice make one 
mighty claim for itself as a powerful and long-standing 
fortress in politics. It was Tammany Hall that a full, 
round century ago gave to the Democratic party its 
first national victory, and to the country Thomas 
Jefferson as its President. Tammany took the first 
steps as a social-benevolent organization. Within a 
handful of years it began to be assertive in politics. 

Tammany Hall, as written before, was ever an object 
of aversion to those who were or would be aristo- 
cratic. Tammany had its conception among the 
masses; its first membership was drawn from those who 
had been private soldiers in the war of Eevolution. 
The object was to upbuild an order against the Cin- 
cinnati; which latter, organizing just before and re- 
garding itself as an order of American nobility, was 
close in its membership, and felt about for its starched 
and perfumed support among those rich, and who had 
been officers of the Continental army. Founded in 



ANCIENT TAMMANY TOASTS. 167 

such feeling, Tammany couldn't in the very sap of 
things refrain long from an enlistment in those forays 
of politics which, one hundred years ago, were, if any- 
thing, more bitter than they are to-day. 

In those last four years when Washington prevailed 
as President, and France was tooth and claw in mortal 
strife with England, the question American became: 
" Shall we aid France as fifteen years ago she aided 
us? " And general sentiment divided. Washington 
was against aid, Jefferson was for it; and Tammany, 
hating England, took side with Jefferson. The Tam- 
many position had setting forth in those toasts offered 
at its banquet of 1796, whereof the following is a list. 
The festival was in celebration of English evacuation 
of the city, and the sentiments offered read as follows: 

" The people of the United States and their Presi- 
dent. 

"The virtuous Congress of 1776 who decreed the 
freedom of three millions of their fellow citizens, thou- 
sands of whom afterwards sealed it with their blood. 

" The republic of France. May the wisdom atid 
energy of her counsels confound and dismay, while her 
armies and navy overwhelm and annihilate her enemies. 

" Spain, and those other powers who have acknowl- 
edged the republics of America, France, and Holland. 
May they be an example to those despots of the world 
who are yet blind to the happiness of the human race. 

" A lasting peace, founded on the basis of equal 
rights to the belligerent powers of Europe; may they 
never more unsheathe the sword in defense of des- 
potism. 

" Citizens Jourdan, Buonaparte, Moreau, Boumon- 
ville, and the other brave officers and soldiers of the 



168 RICHARD CROKER. 

French armies; success to their arms, and may their 
exertions secure the constitution and liberties of the 
French republic. 

" Success and prosperity to all who contend for the 
equal rights of men. 

" May the late infamous British treaty be expunged 
from the laws of our land. 

" Eternal love and gratitude to the French nation; 
may the men who would connect us with Great Britain 
justly incur the resentment of every genuine American. 

" The voluntary exiles of our city and country who 
sacrificed their all to establish freedom and inde- 
pendence. 

" The memory of those American citizens who fell 
martyrs to the cause of our country; may we never for- 
get to celebrate their glorious deeds. 

" May the ' exercise of heels ' so nobly displayed on 
the 35th of November, 1783 (Evacuation Day), be for- 
ever improved to the advantage of the [Democrats] 
Eepublicans. 

" The American fair. May their smiles be propi- 
tious to the cause of freedom and their approbation be 
only bestowed on the friends of their countr}\ 

" A speedy evacuation of the city by all Tories, 
royalists, and British emissaries; may their retreat be 
to the tune of ' Yankee Doodle.' 

" May the tricolor flag soon wave in triumph on the 
Tower of London, and may the oppressed citizens of 
Britain regain their lost rights and enjoy perpetual 
freedom. 

" The day we celebrate; may we ever remember the 
greasy flagstaff and the triumph of Liberty." 

Those were the sentiments of Tammany Hall in 



JACKSON'S PICTURE. 169 

1796; they are still her sentiments, as witness some 
recent resolutions, not to say money contributions, in 
succor of a Boer republic beset of the English; and a 
yesterday failure to half-mast the city's flag on the 
occasion of a royal funeral. 

In the four years between the day of these toasts and 
the election of 1800, when Adams went down before 
Jefferson, and pure Democracy set its heel on the neck 
of Federalism, there were a half dozen great minds busy 
with the separation of American sentiment into parties. 
The elder Adams was President; Jefferson was the over- 
shadowing name in Virginia and the South; Hamilton, 
Secretary of the Treasury while Jefferson was Secre- 
tary of State for Washington, hitherto dictator in 
New York, was being bluntly met in the lists of politics 
by Aaron Burr; and Jackson, on the threshold of Con- 
gress, was just taking his first step in affairs. 

Speaking of the latter, Gallatin remembers him of 
that time, " as a tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, 
with long locks of hair hanging over his face, and a 
queue down his back tied with an eel-skin; his dress 
singular, his manners and deportment those of a rough 
backwoodsman." Poor Jackson! His dress and de- 
portment no more suited the taste of the Federal Tur- 
veydrops, than did, thirty-five years after, his admin- 
istration of economy, and the cutting out of that public 
cancer the United States (Biddle) Bank delight the 
Whigs. Uncouth and awkward indeed he was. And 
singularly so did the British at New Orleans, and the 
Calhoun rebellionists of the thirties, discover him. 

John Adams was President, the man of whom Frank- 
lin wrote, " He is always honest, sometimes great, but 
often mad." The vigors of Washington had ceased. 



170 RICHARD CROKER. 

Adams and Alexander Hamilton were the controlling 
spirits of the Federalists; and because that party was 
in power, of the nation also. The Federalists were the 
party of the money interests and of the aristocracy. 
They believed in American independence; but their 
leaders at least stopped there and did not believe in 
American republicanism. This was peculiarly true of 
Hamilton, who referred to the organic law of this coun- 
try as " that crazy old hulk of a Constitution "; and 
finally, disappointed of his prophecies of coming crash, 
and defeated of his New York autocracy by Burr, and 
Tammany Hall, and of his national supremacy by 
Jefferson in 1800, wrote wailingly to a friend: "I'm 
not the man for America; I never was." 

Certainly your rough, rude Democrats, such as 
thronged the corridors of Tammany Hall, and who fol- 
lowed Jefferson and Jackson and Burr to ballot-battle, 
each in his region, were far from being favorites among 
those who professed the super-delicacy and disesteem of 
the vulgar which were so eminent in that English no- 
bility they with servile sedulity admired and imitated. 
The rich, who in that New York day as in this were 
the " respectable," were Federalists to a gentleman. 
The poor — what portion the rich and " respectable " 
didn't buy nor browbeat — the poor, who then as now 
were the " vulgar," were Democrats and Tammany 
men to a man. And these lines of separation ran even 
into literature; such as Washington Irving and Feni- 
more Cooper — although these two came notably into 
the light a bit later — and others of the guild of scrib- 
blers, with wit enough to locate the butter on their 
bread, were Federalists. 

That high disregard of a hobnailed Democracy burned 




John J. Scannell. 



MARTHA WASHINGTON'S RAGE. Ml 

now and again in social life, and it was Martha Wash- 
ington, our own country's mother, who, on coming into 
the room to give some order about Mistress Nellie 
Custis' music lesson, had her eye anger-riveted to an 
oily spot on her wall paper, left by some visiting head 
more laden of bear's grease than prudence. 

" What is that? " demanded the indignant housewife, 
and her scorn-shaken finger was pointed at the spot. 
"What is that? A grease spot! Some low, dirty 
Democrat left that; no Federal wouJd have done it." 

Some sign of that day's feeling, and of those near 
years to follow Independence, may be discovered in 
what Jefferson writes concerning it. Jefferson was 
one known for his honesty. " Thought expands, 
action narrows," says Goethe, and Jefferson was a phi- 
losopher. Wise, thoughtful, Jefferson was decisively 
not the man of action. But he read, and he dwelt, and 
he traveled, and he witnessed, and he turned matters 
over in his deep, clear, transparent mind. His was a 
genius of many sides, and Jefferson had rank as a states- 
man, a scholar, a philosopher, a litterateur, a traveler, 
an architect, an inventor, a farmer, and he even played 
on a fiddle. Jefferson conceived and drew the Declara- 
tion of Independence. At the same time he accom- 
plished and gave to posterity another and as great a 
work. It was Jefferson who invented and made a 
draught of the present mold-board of the plow, which 
implement before had been a clumsy, unshapen, 
steel-shod wedge of wood; and it was under his eye, 
and by his blacksmiths in his forge at Shadwell, that 
the first scientific furrow-turner was beaten and ground 
and filed and polished into shape. 

Jefferson believed in the people. Bred and born an 



172 RICHARD CROKER. 

aristocrat, he denied caste. More than Washington 
even, he was the real American. Jefferson read and 
thought and wrote. He liked not muscle-labor and was 
with no army. His sole taste of war was when Tarle- 
ton's cavalry made an occasional raid against Monti- 
cello with a hope of taking prisoner the philosopher 
of freedom. Jefferson never made a speech; which 
fact should prove encouraging to ones in politics whose 
thought hesitates at hopes of fame because they are 
not Ciceros. Jefferson was in France following our 
Revolution. He not alone experienced those in power; 
he went into the cabins of the peasantry. He talked 
with the poor, looked in the pot to discover the dinner 
cooking, sat on the bed to note its hard uncomfort, ate 
of the sour, black bread which mothers fed to their 
children. Jeft'erson heard the story of the peasants. 
He returned among the governing classes, and sound- 
ing the skiramish shallows of their intelligences, decided 
against the folly of heaping importance on idiots." 

When Jefferson returned from abroad he was a wann 
believer in the cause of liberty in France and the French 
Revolution; a movement of politics wherein Adams and 
Hamilton beheld nothing to love. Adams and Hamil- 
ton hated Thomas Paine; Jefferson admired him and 
read his " Rights of Man " with applause, 

Paine's pamphlet is doubtless the document invin- 
cible, and so I hold myself. Yet I've often thought, as 
I glanced it through, that had the Thetford corset- 
maker written, instead of its present head, the " Rights 
of Dogs," or the " Rights of Kine," and then gone over 
his production with a blue pencil, editing in the " ani- 
mal " and editing out the " man," it would all come just 
as true. 



JEFFERSON ON HAMILTON. 173 

By what title does your man gain more of right than 
your animals? and from whom comes to him a fran- 
chise, wider, deeper, better than theirs? Surely he has 
no favor from nature beyond what are the plain legacies 
of both dog and ox. He starves where they starve, 
burns where they burn, freezes where they freeze, 
drowns where they drown, and the wound that lets out 
their life lets out his. It is only our vanity which 
prates of superior or peculiar rights inherent in, and of 
nature's conference on man. Nature has no favorites, 
and all her children, biped and quadruped, and even the 
poor footless worm, are equal in her sight. Nature be- 
lieves that might makes right, and what privileges are 
nature-granted to the individual animal, man or what 
you will, find suggestion and measurement when one 
searches the limits of that individual's strength. 
Might makes right; it is the law. It does not follow 
that wherever there is conflict there is wrong. Both 
sides may be right, and more often than otherwise they 
are. It's like two hands of cards; both are right, one 
is beaten and the other wins. But we go astray; let us 
scramble back to the towpath of our task. 

Jefferson was called into Washington's Cabinet and 
given the portfolio of State. As a lamp by the light of 
which the political thought of that day Inay be glanced 
over, one may turn to what Jefferson writes concerning 
it. Also one will therefrom gain some reading of the 
inner sentiments of those Federal leaders, Hamilton 
and Adams. 

" I returned from the French mission," says Jeffer- 
son, " in the year of the new government, . . . and 
proceeded to New York in March, 1790, to enter upon 
the oflBce of Secretary of State. I found a state of 



174 RICHARD CROKER. 

things which of all I ever contemplated I the least ex- 
pected. . . Politics was the chief topic, and a prefer- 
ence of kingly over republican government was evi- 
dently the favorite sentiment. . . I found myself for 
the most part the only advocate on the republican side 
of the question." 

It was at a Cabinet dinner, and Jefferson records this 
conversation between the king-loving Hamilton and the 
king-bedazzled Adams. Jefferson says: 

" After the cloth was removed, conversation by some 
circumstance was led to the British Constitution. 
Adams observed, ' Purge that Constitution of its cor- 
ruption, and give to its popular branch equality of 
representation, and it would be the most perfect Con- 
stitution ever devised by the wit of man.' 

" Hamilton paused and said, ' Purge it of its corrup- 
tion, and give to its popular branch equality of repre- 
sentation, and it would become an impracticable gov- 
ernment: as it stands at present, with all its supposed 
defects, it is the most powerful government that ever 
existed ' . . . Hamilton was indeed a singular char- 
acter. Of acute understanding, disinterested, honest, 
and honorable in all private transactions, amiable in 
society, and duly valuing virtue in private life, yet was 
he so bewitche'd and perverted by the British example 
as to be under thorough conviction that corruption was 
essential to the government of a nation. Adams had 
originally been a Republican; the glare of royalty and 
nobility during his mission to England had made him 
believe their fascination a necessary ingredient of gov- 
ernment." 

There is a comparison made by that best of biog- 
raphers, Parton, between Jefferson and Hamilton, 



WSAT PARTON WROTE. 1V5 

which, besides being true, tells the plain story of Dem- 
ocrat and Federalist — Tammany and its aristocratic 
opponents. The differences of the two men indicate 
the differences of the others. Parton writes: " Hamil- 
ton and Jefferson could not be an harmonious pair of 
Cabinet ministers. Hamilton hated, Jefferson loved, 
the French revolution. Hamilton approved, Jefferson 
detested, the monarchizing forms of Washington's ad- 
ministration. Hamilton was for a strong and over- 
shadowing Federal government; Jefferson was strenu- 
ous for the independence of the States. Hamilton was 
in favor of high salaries and a general liberality of 
expenditure; Jefferson, liberal with his own money, was 
penurious in expending the people's. Hamilton de- 
sired a powerful standing army; Jefferson was for re- 
lying chiefly on an unpaid patriotic militia. Hamilton 
would have had our ambassadors live at foreign courts 
in a style similar to that of the courtly representatives 
of kings; Jefferson was opposed to any diplomatic 
establishment. Hamilton had a great opinion of for- 
eign commerce; Jefferson knew that home production 
and internal trade are the great sources of national 
wealth. Hamilton gave a polite assent to the prevail- 
ing religious creed and attended the Episcopal church; 
Jefferson was an avowed and emphatic dissenter from 
that creed. And finally, Hamilton the ex-clerk 
[grocery], was a very fine gentleman and wore the very 
fine clothes then in vogue; Jefferson, the hereditary 
lord of acres, combed his hair out of pigtail, discarded 
powder, wore pantaloons, fastened his shoes with 
strings instead of buckles, and put fine gentlemanisms 
out of his heart forever." 

There have been such as Hamilton in every year to 



176 RICHARD CROKER. 

roll since then; luckily there has been a never-stinted 
flood of Jeff'ersons. The parties to-day are as the 
parties then, and the leopard of politics has not 
changed one spot. Seventy years after Jefferson and 
Hamilton encountered in Washington's Cabinet — this 
by way of a curiosity of sentiment — one Wadsworth, a 
senator, made a speech against certain of the yeomanry 
of its pews who held that the aristocratic vestry of 
Trinity Church, made as it was with much point of the 
exclusive, should not have an unwatched and unchecked 
ordering of Trinity's vast estates. It was the old 
Federalist speaking in Wadsworth when he says, as one 
who is delegate of the elect, " I represent the Jays, the 
Hamiltons, and the Kings." Then Wadsworth pro- 
ceeds to characterize the pew-peasants who presume to 
a knowledge of and a voice in their own churchly 
business. " Neither Jack Cade," shouts Wadsworth — 
finely rising to the occasion — " neither Jack Cade nor 
Ledru Rollin ever proposed anything bolder. All 
Jacobinism stands without its parallel. The attack 
upon the noblesse of France, when untold millions of 
property fell the prey to plebeian rapacity, furnishes 
the only fit illustration which my mind can recall to 
express my abhorrence of this outrageous proposition." 
Wadsworth in 1857 still sounds like Hamilton; one 
might imagine that our fop of a Federalist, who like all 
promoted vulgarians was prone to despise and condemn 
the ranks from which he came, was still alive and ora- 
torical. 

Jefferson was elected President in 1800. For the prior 
four years Adams had been President, and it was his 
blunderings and un-Americanisms, added to the Burr- 
directed efforts of Tammany Hall, which served to put 



PRESIDENT JOHN ADAMS. HI 

Jefferson in the White House. Adams was a well-mean- 
ing bigot of a man, crowded of suspicions. His men- 
tality was as strong as the paw of a bear, and as much 
moved of a clumsy curiosity. The nose of the Adams in- 
telligence was into every current thing, to everything's 
disaster. Johnson said that Goldsmith " touched 
nothing he did not adorn." This could not be stated 
of Adams, who touched only to disarrange. He was 
the genius of error, the spirit of mistake, and knew 
more of fiends and angels than he did of men. Decid- 
edly he was bankrupt of that grand sense, superior to 
other sense, called common sense. An egotist, con- 
stant in his own thoughts, he believed himself to be 
ever in the minds of other men. Timid where there 
was no threat, he ordered arms from the arsenal into 
his house in Philadelphia to protect himself from 
non-existent perils and against mobs which never 
had him in their thought. He was finicky and 
small, and tenderly apprehensive of his dignity as 
President, without the tact or taste to keep himself 
from being laughed at. While he was going through 
Newark, a foolish cannon banged uproariously in his 
honor. An onlooker, with little humor and less cau- 
tion, not respecting Adams, wished audibly that the 
paper wadding had struck the President on the part 
amplest of his rear elevation. Under the acts of Alien 
and Sedition whereof Adams was a tireless advocate 
this was a kind of Use majeste, and the Federal Presi- 
dent caused the ribald one to be sentenced to jail, there 
to sup sorrow for a month. This and kindred deeds of 
politico-imbecility did he; and one and all they paved a 
Presidency to Jefferson. 
" John Adams/' said one of his near adherents and 



lis RICHARD CROKER. 

cabineteers, " is a man who whether sportful, witty, 
kind, cold, drunk, sober, angry, easy, stiff, jealous, 
careless, cautious, confident, close or open, is so always 
in the wrong place and with the wrong man." 

That Adams was a bad Republican and a worse Amer- 
ican has display in a letter of argument to his wife. 
After saying that the revolution which overthrew the 
throne in France was from the first " a goblin damned," 
the Bay State narrowist continues. " By the law of 
nature," he writes, " all men are men and not angels 
— men and not lions — men and not whales — men and 
not eagles — that is, they are all of the same species; and 
this is the most that the equality of man amounts to. 
A physical inequality, an intellectual inequality, of the 
most serious kind is established unchangeable by the 
Author of nature; and society has a right to establish 
any other inequality it may judge necessary for its 
good." 

Thus stood men and matters on the eve of the 
Presidential canvass of the year 1800. Jefferson and 
Burr were the candidates of the Democrats; Adams 
and Pinckney opposed them for the Federalists. The 
Democrats favored France; the Federals gave their 
sympathy to England, so lately with her clutch at the 
throat of America. The Democrats sympathized with 
the revolution in France; the Federalists denounced it. 
The Democrats demanded the repeal of the Alien and 
Sedition laws; the Federalists, who were their authors, 
defended them and their retention. Finally, the 
Democrats were for the common folk against the aris- 
tocracy; and the Federals, who believed in caste, faced 
them on that point. The Federals talked of the rights 
of property and were the party of Money; the Demo- 



JBFFEBSON AND BURR. 1^9 

crats laid emphasis on the rights of perishing flesh and 
blood. And Tammany Hall, then as now, was the van- 
guard of State and National Democracy. 

Jefferson felt no hope of victory; he looked forward 
to Adams and a Federal success. Aaron Burr did not 
share the Jefferson forebode. Burr believed that tri- 
umph for the Democracy was probable, and already be- 
held in gloating anticipation the chagrin of his enemy 
Hamilton, with whom, at the bar and in politics, he 
had been at point of rapier for a space of fifteen years. 

Hamilton was the head of the order of the Cincin- 
nati. Also he was son-in-law of General Schuyler; and 
the Schuylers — Federalists — were a formidable tribe. 
The city of New York at that time panted with a 
population of fifty thousand souls. The politics of the 
community was controlled by four great families; the 
Schuylers, the Jays, the Clintons, and the Livingstons. 
The two first were of the Federals; the two latter of 
the Democrats. Hamilton was the leader of the 
one, and Burr of the other. Hamilton, as stated, 
was in control of the Cincinnati; Burr was in command 
of Tammany Hall. And the last was sworn foe of the 
other. 

Piatt to-day has that position in State and city poli- 
tics held by Alexander Hamilton one hundred years 
ago; Burr, who opposed Hamilton, and who was chief 
of the then forces of Tammany, was line for line 
of leadership, and power for power, exact with 
Richard Croker now. The Tammany of then, 
save for numbers, was a picture of the present 
organization. Speaking of the Tammany of 1800, 
Renwick relates: " All who numbered themselves as its 
members were prepared to yield implicit obedience to 



180 RICHARD CROKER. 

the will of its majority; that majority was made to 
move at the beck of committees which concentrated the 
power in the hands of a few individuals. Denunciation 
as a traitor was the fate of him who ventured to act in 
conformity with his individual opinion when it did not 
meet with the general indorsement." One may not 
count many alterations, whether of discipline, or prin- 
ciples, or changes of front, to have come over Tam- 
many Hall in a century. Renwick reads as if he had 
written of the present. 

This is a good place to halt and pitch one's camp. It 
is here on the boundaries of that struggle where a 
White House was to be lost and won; where the elect- 
ors were to fail of a choice; where a tie-vote was to 
hold the House in its dangerous folds for days; where 
first and last the Constitution — " that crazy old hulk " 
of Hamilton's — was to be strained and tested to the 
utmost; where Adams and Hamilton were to fall, and 
vFefferson and Burr rise over them; where Tammany 
Hall was to give to Democracy its first victory and its 
first President, that one may with propriety draw hard 
on the puckering strings of relation and close the 
chapter. 



XII. 



BURR AND TAMMANY. 

'Twas when they raised mid sap and siege 
The banners of their rightful liege, 
—Rose. 

It was long ago, eiglity years or more, when Disraeli, 
the father, wrote the '" Curiosities of Literature," and 
later the " Calamities of Authors," and still later the 
" Quarrels of Authors." I have often reflected what 
thriving tales might flourish under such titles as 
the " Curiosities of Politics," the " Calamities of Poli- 
ticians," and the " Quarrels of Politicians," if only 
some Disraeli of the parties were extant to their con- 
struction. IndubitaJbly it was the organization of the 
self-sufficient Cincinnati, evoking in a spirit of resent- 
ment the counter-organization of Tammany Hall, 
which stifled the American monarchists under the 
name of Federalists and gave to this nation Jefferson 
as President and a true Democracy as a result. 

Contributory to such conclusion were the long-stand- 
ing quarrels of Burr and Hamilton. These differences 
had beginning close on the back of British departure 
from New York, and the peace which followed Corn- 
wallis at Yorktown. They ran through their law prac- 
tice, their social life, their action of politics, until in 
1800 the feud thereby engendered brought them front 
to front as rival captains, one of Tammany and the 
Democracy, and the other of the Cincinnati and the 
Federalists, in this the city of New York. 

181 



182 RICHARD CROKER. 

Stepping aside for one pace, it might be offered as 
hint to whomsoever shall essay the series suggested 
that under the head of " Curiosities of Polities," and 
perhaps that of the " Quarrels of Politicians," he 
should begin with Jefferson's attempt to convict 
Burr of treason at Eichmond. It was this which 
taught Jackson, who was Burr's friend and partner for 
the Mexican expedition, to hate the Man of Monticello; 
and, as corollary thereunto — for Jackson was by nature 
an extremist, ever to mix his passion with his logic — 
to hate also the doctrine of " nullification " and pos- 
sible secession from the Union, of which Jefferson was 
the author and with it the inventor of the word. To 
these, also, our author-to-come should add those Cabi- 
net inharmonies of Jackson whereof the lively Peggy 
O'Neil was the motif, and which — considering the ar- 
dent sort of Jackson — overflowed in his wrath against 
Calhoun, and the issuance of that toast to the plotting 
diners at the old Indian Queen Tavern, " The Union; 
it must and shall be preserved," wherewith the strong 
Jackson palsied, heart and hand, incipient rebellion, 
and staved off civil war for thirty years. 

Before one goes to the tale of Tammany victory in 
1800, and the consequent election of Jefferson to a 
presidency, there might be written, with propriety and 
perhaps with good, a personal word or two of Burr 
and Hamilton who were Wolfe and Montcalm of that 
field. There has been no one in history or out of it 
to be more maligned than Aaron Burr. It seems 
hard to speak the truth of eminence. Either it be- 
comes sacrifice to eulogy, as with Washington and 
Jefferson; or falls victim of the vilifier, as in the case 
of Burr. Four-fifths of present popular estimate of 



SOME ANCESTRAL NOTES. 183 

Burr depends on that speech of Wirt against Burr de- 
livered during the Richmond trial, and which was for 
years kept in the hands of every school-child as an 
exercise of those " Readers " which were their text- 
books; and which must have had certain compilation 
by Federalists or their Burr-hating cubs. Yerily! a 
most solvent source from which to have the truth of a 
man's act and character — the address of that paid 
attorney who had taken fees to prosecute him. 

In the conventional comparisons of Burr with Hamil- 
ton one has been ever offered that cleanly impression of 
a high, proud aristocracy as the ancestry of Hamilton. 
Burr, as against this, was the mephitic bubble on some 
chance-hollowed mudhole of humanity, which the 
storms had filled and the swine enjoyed. For myself I 
care little for an ancestry, preferring rather to hear of 
one's own deeds than those of one's grandfather in de- 
ciding one's worth. But, as has been already set forth, 
this matter of pedigree is important in New York; and, 
therefore, in the stories of Burr and Hamilton may 
as well be understood. 

Burr was grandson by his mother of the worthy 
Jonathan Edwards of Connecticut. Burr's father and 
his father's father were, and still are, famous as the 
two most learned Presidents which the seminary of 
Princeton has known. Hamilton was born in the Isle 
Nevis, a poor pin-prick of the Antilles. His Scotch 
father was a grocer who failed at his trade. His 
mother, descended by the Huguenots, was a Mile. Fau- 
cette. She had been married before she met with the 
father of Hamilton; but finding her first husband more 
gay than true, she retreated to a divorce, her father, 
and her maiden name. 



184 RICHARD CROKER. 

At the age of thirteen Hamilton left school, and 
himself engaged in West Indian commerce behind the 
scales and counters of one Cruger of St. Croix. The 
latter maintained a drygoods and ship-grocery at that 
port. For a number of years Hamilton struggled with 
tropical trade as expressed by cod fish, rum, and sou'- 
westers, and laid the foundation of that money-knowl- 
edge which was to render him great as the first Secre- 
tary of our national Treasury. 

Coming to New York when a youth, for reasons 
which his biographers appear to skip in silence, Hamil- 
ton set himself to a further education. He was irregu- 
larly a day student at what is now Columbia University, 
then Kings College, and wound up by a study of the 
law. 

Both Hamilton and Burr were brave soldiers of the 
Revolution. Hamilton was at one time private secre- 
tary of Washington, and was in the same skiff with the 
latter when he " crossed the Delaware." Burr rose to 
the rank of colonel and distinguished himself with the 
mal-fortuned Montgomery in the campaign against 
Quebec. There, before one, lie the bones of the per- 
sonal stories of both Burr and Hamilton. 

Burr's detractors have laid much lowering stress on 
his blushing gallantries with women. He ofi'ered them, 
truly, opportunity both wide and full for these strict- 
ures. But your purist of to-day should reflect. Those 
were far times, and tumultuous. They were times 
strong with passion, and tinctured of the revolutionary. 
The heroes of those days were folk volcanic, with 
hearts like Hecla; and their same traits of courage and 
stamina and unyielding force which fought a King 
through seven years of Freedom's battles, became in 



PLATONIC LOVE. 185 

softer hours the attributes which turned to woman's 
sweetness like flowers to the sun. Burr was 
in no wise unique in this weakness of the ewige 
wcibliche, as Goethe named it. What was said of Burr 
might have been told — and was — of Washington, of 
Jefferson, of Franklin, and of Hamilton. The latter, 
in truth, in 1797, went to the borderland of duel with 
Madison, later to be President, concerning a certain 
Mistress Eeynolds. The business drove as far as 
seconds, and Burr was acting for Madison in that trig- 
ger-oiling, bullet-molding behalf. It didn't reach the 
burning of powder, however; negotiations, which at 
one time looked hopefully towards it, struck some peace 
argument and glanced off. 

For myself, I've never felt appointed of my star 
to condemn those thinkers and warriors who won our 
Independence, for their warm-eyed interest concerning 
woman. And one may distrust as knaves and hypocrites 
those males who do. Sought after, beamed on, courted 
and admired of women, as each of them was, it would 
have weathered the Cape of Miracles if, with all those 
hot gales blowing, their morals had maintained an even 
keel. 

"What!" cries a feminine voice, bubblous with in- 
cipient indignation; "what! do you mean to assert 
that a woman may not admire a great man and tell 
him so?" 

" It is an exercise of much unsaf ety, madam." 

" Are you willing to say," cries the same feminine 
voice, " that a man and a woman may not maintain a 
platonic friendship for one another?" 

" Pardon me, madam; not unless they're married to 
one another." 



186 BICHAIW CROKER. 

" But these heroes," cries the voice, " were as eager 
to invoke the admiration of woman as she to offer it." 

" True, madam; that arose from excess of the 
natural." 

It is right to admit that I do not understand woman, 
and may no more follow the windings of her nature, 
wanting the aid of some Ariadne and her clew of silk, 
than Theseus might the labyrinth of Minos. But man 
is a simpler animal; I know him in each detail of his 
contradictions. Man is a paradox, and a paradox is 
ever a fraud. Man is at once his own captor and his 
own captive. In his nature he is both hare and hound; 
ever a fugitive, ever in fervent pursuit of himself. 

This genius for the Self-opposite runs through all he 
does. It will find evincement in the matter of religious 
thought. His reason will go one way, his instinct an- 
other. He will ruminate the subject of himself: his 
past and his hereafter. His reason will alarm him 
with the fact that his each act or thought is result 
of cause, itself result of other, further cause, and 
so ad infinitum. Your man, reasoning, will hear 
the linked chain of effect and cause clanking rear- 
wardly until dimly the clanking is lost and died 
away in the last hollows of his heretofore. He 
does not understand, he may not comprehend, more 
than he understands and embraces the fact of f rameless 
space. But he believes he knoivs; just as he is aware of 
the eternal granite without grasping, even with the 
hand of conjecture, the promise of its first production. 
The decision of your man reasoning is that he's a 
fatalist. The whole future is decreed; man himself is 
locked helpless as a fly in amber. 
• And yet in his instincts, and that despite his reason, 




e: 



Fireplace in Cafe of the Democratic Club. 



MAN'S CONTRADICTIONS. 187 

he feels that he is free. Knowing himself tethered to 
some picket-pin of the inevitable, also he knows that 
he has liberty of body and soul by the testimony of 
sheer instinct. It is likewise to be said^ — and the race 
has comfort and good fortune therefrom — that man's 
fatalism, child of his reason, never drags him beyond 
the stage of theory. On the contrary, each item of his 
goings about, and all he does and tries to do, find their 
feet in his instinctive knowledge that he is free. 

And, madam, — for I am still moved to your instruc- 
tion, — never engage to know a man's sentiments by dis- 
covering his deeds. In those multiplied contradic- 
tions of man-nature which say both " yes " and " no " 
to every asking, one is not, when considering the 
problem of man, to determine his belief by his action. 
In this one matter of man's attitude towards woman, 
which, if I err not, was the start-point of present 
trouble, one would often go mightily astray were one 
to deduce man's conclusions from his conduct, and come 
at what he thinks by what he does. There are many 
who with the instincts of a Roundhead have the habits 
of a Cavalier; they act like Charles the Second while 
they think like Cromwell. 

Discussion was never fair nor liberal with the name 
of Burr. There came no charity to cover the multi- 
tude of his sins. Burr said, for example, that " Law is 
anything that's boldly asserted and ingeniously main- 
tained." He had much abuse for this, as he 
who, with no respect for Justice, was adept of de- 
ceit, plot, conspiracy, and chicane. Choate, who 
does our present louting before Royalty at St. James', 
observed of the Courts of New York and that suspi- 
cious instability wherewith they held the scales, " It is 



188 RICHARD CROKER. 

better to know the judge than to know the law," and 
was regarded for his sparkling wit as another Curran. 
Yet why assail Burr while one garlands Choate? 

Again, a century agone, the Federalists, controlling 
the banks, and as well the legislatures at Albany, would 
grant no bank charter to Democrats lest they collect 
therein and thereby the sinews of war. Some 
Socrates of carnage, and one profound of blood, 
once wrote, " There are three things needed to wage 
successful war; the first is money, the second is money, 
and the third is money." One may say as much of 
politics. Wherefore the Federalists were not weak 
enough to open any chapter of chances in favor of 
Democrats by granting them a charter for a bank. 

Yellow fever came ashore. It slew its thousands 
and its tens of thousands. Most thoroughly did it 
weed and thin the city of New York. The Wise Men — 
as they commonly do to this day — attributed all mor- 
tality to bad water. Burr saw an opportunity. He 
asked the legislature for a charter wherewith to form 
a water company. It was to be known as " The Man- 
hattan Company." The capital was fixed at two mil- 
lions; a healthful sum for that hour. 

Mild and meek as one might wish to see, squatted 
cozily away in a far corner of the charter, was a clause 
to the effect that, after water had been provided, " the 
company's surplus capital might be employed in any 
way not inconsistent with the laws and constitutions of 
the United States and the State of New York." The 
charter was granted. Burr and his fellow stockholders 
complied — and no more — with the strict water condi- 
tions of the document. They dug an excellent well, 
the same being still abroad in the land. It was of that 



THE MANHATTAN BANK. 189 

capacity, perhaps, which might serve the thirst of what 
cattle should belong with an ordinary farm. Then 
Burr and his stockholders turned the balance of their 
capital and energy to the organization of that present 
giant concern of money known as The Manhattan Bank. 
Burr was, and still is, by Federalists and their de- 
scendants most gloriously assailed for this deception. 
Had he been a Federalist they would have twined 
wreaths for him. 

In the summer of 1800, Burr at the head of Tam- 
many Hall, and Hamilton as chief of the Federals, 
looked with evil eye one upon the other. They sat 
down to plan their campaigns. Hamilton, whether as 
trapper or hunter of politics, was never match for Burr. 
Whether it was to set some midnight snare, or whether 
the plan called for battle-axes at noon, Burr showed 
cleverer, stronger of the two. 

Hamilton, who was immensely the egotist and as 
much in love with his own reflection in the pool of 
politics as a Narcissus, was not aware of this. He felt 
himself infinitely the greater man. He was " son-in- 
law of Senator Schuyler; " he was flower of the local 
aristocracy; moreover, his party of the Federalists had 
never met defeat, and in the year before, 1799, had 
carried New York by a majority of nine hundred. 

Burr, with Tammany Hall at his back, believed he 
would triumph, but knew he must work. And Burr 
waxed indefatigable. He was the first " Boss " of 
Tammany Hall, and resolved to make a record. Burr 
span his policy as spiders spin their webs. Theft was 
not theft in Sparta unless discovered in process of 
commission. Burr and Hamilton so far emulated Ly- 
curguB that they scrupled at no act of eavesdropping. 



190 RICHARD CROKER. 

nor larceny of documents, nor what else might serve; 
they feared no disgrace where there was no detection, 
and held with the swart Tarquin, " the fault unknown 
is as a thought unacted." 

Burr was as sedulous as sleepless. He had a spy in 
every council, an agent at the elbow of every oppor- 
tunity. Burr put off Tammany Hall's ticket-making 
until Hamilton had made his. Burr got a copy of 
Hamilton's ticket before it was public, and within 
twenty minutes after it was decided by the Federal 
managers. Burr was elated with the Hamilton names. 
There wasn't a good man on the list; each was the 
hand-made puppet of Hamilton himself. 

Then Tammany, with Burr in council, selected its 
candidates. There were never stronger names pre- 
sented to the voters of New York. Among others, 
and leading them, were ex-Governor Clinton, Judge 
Livingston, and General Gates, the latter the conquerer 
of the English at Saratoga. 

Tammany's committee, with Burr as spokesman, 
waited upon these people of pedestals to notify them 
of their selection. Gates said he'd " run " if Clinton ac- 
cepted. Livingston said the same. Burr and the Tam- 
many chiefs headed for Clinton. Now the latter states- 
man was a child of certain stubborn, self-willed, canny 
Scotch-Irish, and possessed the family traits in ex- 
aggeration. To add to that, as against Jefferson or any- 
one else, Clinton mightily preferred that he be Presi- 
dent himself. Four years before Clinton had received 
thirty electoral votes. Clinton had hopes, and there- 
fore didn't want to commit himself to the Jefferson 
canvass. He refused to permit the Burr-Tammany folk 
his name. Clinton " wouldn't go on any local ticket." 



CLINTON CONSENTS. 191 

Burr argued, flattered, besought, and cajoled. Noth- 
ing might move the ambitious ex-Governor. Clinton 
was polite, but positive. His name must not be on the 
Jefferson-Tammany ticket. Then Burr shifted the 
wind of argument. 

"When it comes to that. Governor Clinton," said 
Burr, and he'd grown as haughtily high as the ex-Gov- 
ernor — " when it comes to that, our appearance before 
you, preferring the request that you run on this ticket, 
is a function rather of courtesy than need. With the 
last word, and regardless either of your plans or your 
preferences, the public is perfect in its right to name 
you and compel you to run. And, Governor, should 
you continue to withhold your consent, we stand al- 
ready determined to retain your name despite refusal, 
and pursue the course I've indicated as one entirely 
within the lines of popular right." 

Clinton was at a loss. In the end he gracefully con- 
sented, but with the understanding that he didn't per- 
sonally favor Jefferson, and was not to make any speech 
in his advocacy, reservations for which neither Burr 
nor the Tammany folk cared ever a penny. They had 
gotten the names of Clinton, Gates, and Livingston on 
their ticket, which was the vote-winning desideratum 
sought. 

As an at-the-polls finale, Tammany Hall and Burr 
ran over the Federals and Hamilton in the city of 
New York by a majority of four hundred and ninety. 
This gave Jefferson the State. Without New York, 
Jefferson at the last would have been defeated and 
John Adams returned to succeed himself. 

Hamilton was frantic. It was beyond belief. In 
his resentments of things as they were — ^it casts a side- 



102 RICH AMD CHOKER. 

light on the Hamilton character — he wrote a private 
letter to Ja}^, then Governor (Federal), and urged him 
to a special convention of the legislature (Federal) 
when measures would be concocted to steal from Jef- 
ferson the State. In apology to Jay, a man of spotless 
honor, for the iniquity proposed, Hamilton said at the 
close of the letter that it was the last method " to pre- 
vent an atheist in religion and a fanatic in politics from 
getting possession of the helm of state." 

Jay did not call an extra session of the legislature, 
nor did he answer Hamilton's letter. The villain 
proffer never would have been knowTi, save that long 
afterward the missive was found among Jay's papers, 
stiffly indorsed in Jay's own hand, " Proposing a meas- 
ure for party purposes which I think it would not be- 
come me to adopt." 

As sequel to this election the choice of President 
went finally to the House of Representatives — as was 
then the law — on the failure of a majority of the 
Presidential electors to unite on one name. Many of 
the Federals, breathless to defeat Jefferson, proposed 
Burr against him. The decision hung in the wind of a 
House tie for many days. 

Jefferson believed, and Burr's enemies declared, that 
Burr gave countenance to this Federal plot and strove 
to seize from Jefferson the Presidency. The proof is the 
other way; two specimens of the evidence on that point 
might be printed, the more readily since they seem to 
be conclusive. During the progress of ballot-taking, 
Cooper, a Federalist of New York, an anti-Jefferson 
man, and incidentally the father of that Cooper who 
has fame for " Leatherstocking," wrote to a friend: 
" All stand firm. Jefferson eight; Burr six; divided 



A2^ ELDER BAYARD. 193 

two. Had Burr done anything for himself he would 
long ere this have been President. If a majority would 
answer, he would have had it on every vote." 

Following Jefferson's election as President and that 
of Burr as Vice President, one Bayard of Delaware, the 
first of a family now happily extinct in American poli- 
tics, wrote to Hamilton. Bayard said: " The means 
existed of electing Burr, but this required his co- 
operation. By deceiving one man (a great blockhead) 
and tempting two (not incorruptible) he might have 
secured a majority of the States. He will never have 
another chance of being President of the United States, 
and the little use he made of this one gives me but a 
poor opinion of his talents." How very like a Bayard! 

Burr's name and fame are choked with weed of lie 
and slander even unto this day. But there will come 
the rescue, and a future shall do him equity. Truth 
is not to die, nor prejudice to live, and so Burr's day 
will dawn. There was never a flaw nor a falsity in 
Burr's attitude towards the public. He had been brave 
as a soldier, he was leader of the bar, and in things 
political Burr was all American. Burr never had a 
dollar with spot or stain to mark it. He was honest, 
he was generous, he was loyal. He deceived none who 
was his friend; deserted no obligation, betrayed no 
trust. If his downfall is to have solution, Burr was 
crushed by his own triumphs. Like that Paul Jones 
who was England's terror and the sea-hero of the 
Eevolution, Burr found his destruction in those envies 
bred of his success. 

Jefferson never forgot nor forgave Burr that heart- 
shaking tie for a Presidency, and to the end was in- 
veterately on the track of Burr. Jefferson charged 



194 RICHARD CROKER. 

Burr with public treason. He tried Burr three times; 
in Kentucky, in Mississippi, and in Eichmond. And 
thrice by court and jury Burr was acclaimed innocent. 
It is among the best words to be spoken of Marshall 
that, cold and firm and right, he could declare the law 
and displease the White House at one and the same 
time. 

It may not be to Jefferson's whole discredit that 
he was so fiercely and, one might add, unscrupu- 
lously the enemy of Burr. It shows that he had those 
blazing weaknesses that make of man a man and not 
a god. Find that one who has done no wrong, and you 
will have overtaken one who has done nothing. Much 
that is hailed excellent is only the absence of activities 
— the good-passive. And the good-passive is a com- 
modity of tameness. It is hueless, gray, and wan; it 
has none of the vivid richness of those prismatic seven 
which, for aught one knows, may be the convicting 
register of seven sins of the sun. 

Jackson, however, was one who never exonerated 
Jefferson for his pursuit of Burr. During the latter's 
trial Jackson came hot-foot from Nashville to Eich- 
mond to express his contempt for the President; a 
ceremony he accomplished in divers set speeches, and 
with much applause from the multitude. 

Another disaster to Burr was his duel with, and the 
death of, Hamilton. His enemies, both in the Federal 
party and in his own, used it to his tearing down. 
Burr was right and his detractors wrong. 

Burr met Hamilton honorably and by the custom of 
that time. Hamilton professed the duello; his own son 
had been killed, but a brief few years before, on those 
very grounds where he fell before the pistol of Burr. 



TEE BURR-HAMILTON DUEL. 195 

Hamilton was made mad with his overthrow by Tam- 
many under the captaincy of Burr. Hamilton there- 
after, at each chance and by every covert method, 
maligned and traduced Burr. Nor is there scrap 
to show that Burr followed a course similar towards 
Hamilton. Burr was mute while the other ex- 
hausted malice in incessant and baseless tales against 
him. Burr was Vice President, the second ofl&cer 
of state; Hamilton was politically nothing. Burr 
was the war-general of a militant Democracy and 
had led it to its first success; Hamilton was 
that defeated commander whom he'd crushed. Each 
was evenly endowed of worldly goods. Each had 
his law practice. Each had his town house, Ham- 
ilton at 52 Cedar Street and Burr at 30 Fulton; 
each had his country seat, the one at the Grange and 
the other at Eichmond Hill. Of the two, when each 
is counted in his all — Burr in a blush of triumph and 
Hamilton in the jaundice of defeat — it will find notice 
that Burr by that duel risked more, since he had more 
to lose. 

Burr, for his honor meanly assailed, came down from 
his high place as President of the Senate, and in a 
series of letters, easily obtainable, backed Hamil- 
ton across the river to the New Jersey side and took 
his life. Burr, who did all things well or left them un- 
attempted, was as complete with the pistol as he was 
with politics. At the word Burr fired, and shot Hamil- 
ton in the midst of his body. Hamilton, raised to his 
toes by the horrid shock of it, fired the moment after. 
His bullet clipped the harmless twigs about Burr's head. 
Then Hamilton fell on his face; and then he was taken 
away to live some hours, and at the last to die. 



196 RICHARD CROKER. 

During those hours of life Hamilton had a duty to 
do, and he missed and failed of even its attempt. And 
the omission smells of littleness and tells against his 
manhood. What was it? 

Out in the sun-burned far Southwest is a cluster of 
adobes called for compliment a " town." Two men 
played with each other that device named seven-up for 
a stake of twenty dollars a point. One may be called 
Driscoll and the other Burlison. Both belonged to 
that region and were of the trade of cows. Driscoll 
was " bad," and as prone to trouble as sparks to fly up- 
ward; his six-shooter was known for its offensiveness. 
Burlison, though steadier, was likewise " bad," and like- 
wise, to be dialectic, " packed a gun." Of a sudden 
both men were on their feet; three shots were fired. 
Each had birth in Burlison's pistol, and the sounds of 
that firing trod on each other's heels like the striking 
of a Yankee clock. Driscoll fell with three bullets in 
him, and the day of his death was written. Two hours 
later, on his bed in the Jackson House, Driscoll was 
able to speak. These were his first words. 

" Where's Burlison? " he said. 

" He's surrendered himself to the sheriff," he was 
told. " Do you want to see him? " 

" No; don't bring him here," Driscoll whispered. 
" I'm hit too hard to shoot; so there's no sense in my 
seeing him. But there's a word I want to say to you- 
all, and it's what I want done. You didn't see this 
shooting and I did. This killing is on the square, and 
Burlison is right. I reached for my gun first; and if 
it hadn't hung in the scabbard I'd have had him in hell 
in a second. I'm to die, and I want my death to end 
it. I've no use for Burlison, and if I could get to my 



THE WESTERN WAT. 197 

feet and my guns I'd hunt him now. Still he was right 
to shoot. He filled his hand and I didn't. He outheld 
me; that's the whole story. And you-all are to throw 
Burlison loose." 

Driscoll, who could hate and still do justice, died 
with the demand for his foe's release on his lips. The 
West has a balanced hand, and Burlison walked free. 
Hamilton's death-conduct should have been some half 
brother with Driscoll's. It would have testified to 
that heart-honesty on Hamilton's part of which there's 
a deal too little evidence. 

Burr suffered for this duel. The Jefferson folk, and 
the Hamilton folk, and every Burr-hater found in it a 
weapon to his use. Those also who were opposed to 
dueling, with that ill-logic too often between the un- 
thinking teeth of your sentimentalists, were harsh in 
their attacks on Burr; they denounced him when, had 
they possessed consistency, they would have denounced 
the custom. 

And while one has that topic between one's hands, 
why is it that the system of dueling must be so denied 
and turned upon? It is because folk lose their lives 
by it? Is it that death and that blood, its incidents, 
which are to shock us into opposition? Nonsense! 
we care little enough for death and blood. We sit here 
while our surface railways slay folk at a better average 
than a death a day, and are no more than by the fall 
of a sparrow to be disturbed thereby. Indifference 
to life is a prime national characteristic; stoics, afore- 
time, were hysterical by comparison with us. On each 
and every hand the half -searching eye may see at what 
trifle we value life. Then why so fiercely forward to 
cow this duel custom? The argument once offered by 



198 RICHARD CROKER. 

a gentleman of South Carolina had some cogent spunks 
and sparks. 

" Yes, sir/' observed the gentleman, in deference to 
query on that point — " yes, sir; I favor dueling. I 
understand neither the sentiment nor the rule that ob- 
jects. Surely, the law is highly inconsistent. Should 
I be aroused in the night by a person in my smoke- 
house stealing hams, I am permitted by the law to 
stroll to the rear door, clad in a shirt and a shotgun, 
and shoot the marauder dead without giving him a 
chance. That same man, by fagot of slander and brand 
of lie, might be striving to burn the reputation of my 
sister at the stake of his own villainy; and yet the law 
threatens to hang me if I summon him to the duel, and 
face to face, with equal weapons take his life. I may 
slay the wretch — hunger-driven he might be — who 
steals a dollar's worth of bacon; but the miscreant who 
would rob a woman of her good repute is safeguarded 
from the wrath of those who, being of her friends and 
family, are also with her his prey. There's neither 
justice nor good sense in the law situation I've de- 
scribed." 

There's a deal of drivel concerning this same busi- 
ness of the duel. Claptrap, chatter, cant, and coward- 
ice are all distinguishable among its component parts. 
From the same sources of a vapid and mindless 
conventionality come similar twitterings about Lynch 
law and committees of vigilance. We expand our 
shirt fronts and, after reading of some Southern or 
Western lynching, express our horror, and speak in 
tones and words of self-felicitation of that " law and 
order " we, ourselves, and in our own communities of 
the North, uphold. 



COMMITTEES OF VIGILANCE. 199 

Two-thirds of this, our self-applause, are the veriest 
snivel of hypocrisy. Law and order! Law and dis- 
order! rather. The worst governed of the whole roll- 
call of the world's communities are the Northern and 
Northeastern cities of this Union. Take the city of 
New York: a sober and discreet committee of one hun- 
dred, clothed of a purpose of justice and a bale of half- 
inch rope, would bring such order and security to the 
public as it has not thus far known. The first Ameri- 
canism, and with it the first safety of life and limb, 
goods and good repute, are to be found in the South and 
West where your committee of vigilance can be con- 
vened at call. That committee is the best expression of 
the popular will. It comes up through no crookedness 
of tortuous and interested legislation; it smells of no 
vote-rottenness; it is as bribeless as a storm, as much 
beyond corruption as the light of day. It has but one 
thought: Justice. And it never fails. One may say of 
committees of vigilance what one may not of courts. 
No committee of vigilance ever hanged the wrong man, 
nor let the wrong man go. 

From motives of safety to his reputation Burr 
should not have gone abroad. It was a mistake; doing 
nothing for him in Europe, while fanning obloquy at 
home. And then the woe he must have met! Driven 
from England, he goes to Norway, to Denmark, to 
Prussia, at last to France. Burr tried to enlist Na- 
poleon in his programmes of Southwestern Empire. 
He failed; Just as failed Robert Fulton when he sought 
to recruit the same personage for his water-campaign 
of steam. Burr met Talleyrand; that crook-foot rascal 
of state who was never grateful save for favors to come. 
Burr had given Talleyrand countenance in the bright 



^ 



20C RICHARD CROKER. 

days of Richmond Hill, and when the Frenchman, 
dodging the guillotine, was fugitive. But that counted 
for nothing in the eye of Talleyrand, with whom grati- 
tude had rating as vice, and any decent goodness of 
memory for those who had been one's shelter and de- 
fense was, as he phrased it, that thing worse than 
crime — a blunder. 

Burr came back to America and practiced law. He 
lived to be eighty-one. His latter years were poisoned 
of poverty, which last, as Lytton says, " is the wicked 
man's tempter, the good man's perdition, the proud 
man's curse, the melancholy man's halter." Burr was 
poor. Yet as he fell not into temptation, nor took his 
life with a rope, one is allowed the thoughts that he was 
neither " wicked " nor sad. How far, being a good 
man, he experienced the " perdition," or being proud, 
to what extent the " curse " of poverty, Burr was in too 
much command of himself to disclose. One may only 
surmise. Sure it is that unto the day of his death his 
bright, dangerous eyes looked folk in the face; what- 
ever may have overtaken a world's respect for him, he 
still Avas in full conquest of his own. From youth to 
age, in prosperity or loss, no one in glance or word or 
step of Burr beheld a change. He was the man 
immutable. 

And it is this very immutability that is the one sure 
mark of greatness. The truly great, those who are 
great of themselves and not of their conditions, are 
changeless. Go he up or go he down, the great man is 
ever the same. 

Grant, who from a wood-hauling, hide-tanning ob- 
scurity was a world's greatest soldier in five years, and 
rode with a million and a half of men at his horse's tail; 



THE CHANGELESS BURR. 201 

who was twice President; who was flattered and ban- 
queted by Princes in a round-the-world progress such as 
Kings had never made; Grant was with it all and 
through it all the same silent, modest, earnest gentle- 
man whom folk knew before Lincoln was inaugurated, 
or ever the first standards of rebellion were free-shaken 
to the winds. Grant was great. 

Burr, who had destroyed the dynasty of Federalism; 
who was himself within a vote of the White House; 
who had been a Vice President and ruled a Senate; who 
had dreamed conquest like a Caesar and seen it almost 
within reach, went from high to low. And yet, the 
Burr who under fire bore the dead Montgomery from 
the field of battle; the Burr who conquered in politics; 
the Burr who guided a Senate in hours shaken of 
passionate effort; the Burr who killed Hamilton at 
Weehawken; the Burr who planned an empire at his 
feet; the Burr who spread his calm blankets in the 
Virginia Jail; the Burr who lived his last years and died 
in the folds of want, was note for note, and word for 
word, and thought for thought, and look for look the 
same unchanging Burr. No success could add to him, 
while disaster took nothing away; no bad fortune nor 
good was to recarve or redraw him in any least of detail. 
Burr was ever Burr. And Burr, like Grant, was great. 

Time, that last repositor of justice, will yet rear a 
stone to Burr. And it should appear thereon that he, 
with Tammany Hall, supplementing at the polls the 
work of the war-fields of the Kevolution, rescinded the 
laws of Alien and Sedition, rescued the countr}^ from 
Monarchy, set up Jefferson to be President and not 
Kaiser, and fairly, first and for all time, established 
civil and religious liberty in this land, 



XIII. 

THE VENGEANCE. 

And if we do but watch the hour, 
There never yet was human power 
Which could evade, if unforgiven, 
The patient search and vigil long 
Of him who treasures up a wrong. 

— Mazeppa. 

Tweed, born in 1823, was twenty-three years of age 
when Richard Croker came as a child to America. 
Kelly, whose nom de guerre of " Honest " was conferred 
on him by popular voice, and under whose command 
Richard Croker was later to fight against Tweed and 
his Ring, at the time pointed to had witnessed twenty- 
five years, opening his first eyes in 1821. Both 
Tweed and Kelly were native Americans, born and 
cradled of the city of New York. 

When in the sixties Richard Croker began his 
life of politics and became a member of Tammany Hall, 
Tweed was the most powerful figure of that organiza- 
tion. Tammany was not then come to the military 
excellence of discipline and concert of movement which 
it has reached under the chiefship of Croker. Condi- 
tions of " machine " or military perfection arise from 
characteristics to repose in the man at the head; and 
where Croker is the soldier, both Tweed and Kelly were 
quite the opposite. They were lax and loose of rule; 
and while folk of unblinking courage, and Kelly 
notably stubborn and obstinate withal, they had none 



TWEED AND KELLY. 203 

of that capacity for organization which forms men into 
companies, into regiments, into brigades, into divi- 
sions, into corps, into armies: and which then moves 
the whole as one. Neither Tweed nor Kelly owned 
aught better than commonest talents for labor of this 
sort; Croker's genius, on the other hand, . lies in 
that direction. Croker comes more to the model of 
such as Cromwell, whom his ancestors followed so 
freely; Kelly was rather a herd-leader like unto Wat 
Tyler; Tweed, a rogue whose end was plunder, is better 
comparable to some admiral of pirates who, with per- 
sonal force and courage, has no discipline about him, 
and is followed for spoil merely; whose retainers leave 
him and return to him and leave him again, as their 
wills or caprices move, or some appearance of present 
advantage addresses itself to their eyes. Tweed's 
people were inclined to consult their own pleasures in 
matters of obedience, and regarded or neglected his 
orders as at the time conformed to their tastes. 
Tweed's forces were as a band of marauders; Kelly's 
as a concourse, honest yet unruly with many views; 
Croker's following is that marshaled and commanded 
army where none disputes, nor doubts, nor does aught 
save as directed. 

This latter is the only thing to last. It is the very 
Qgg of conquest; and following triumph, can protect 
itself in possession of whatever prize is made. Such 
as Tweed's supremacy cannot endure, and is in every 
instance of its assertion shortly to be stricken down as 
the pertinent retort to its own villainies. Such con- 
trol as Kelly's, being honest means honor surely, but 
little else beyond. Undrawn, straggling, stricken of in- 
concert, it is non-discipline against discipline and 



204 RICHARD CROKER. 

goeth forth only to defeat. Croker^s rule, better than 
the others, the rule of the soldier, is parent of victory 
in perpetuity; or, if not quite the last, then in such 
stretches as make reasons for hard work and grant to 
war some wisdom. 

Tweed's story has been told and retold, and much of 
it is part and portion of the crime relation of this town. 
Tweed lived and died. He was in early life of those 
volunteers of fire whereof there has before been word 
or two in these pages, and at one time found disport as 
foreman of " Big Six," in which water-pumping office 
he fought and bit and gouged and smote himself into 
much glorious renown. Tweed was once a Congressman; 
but the halls of legislation offered no true stage for his 
talent, which was rather of the rude, burglarious kind. 

Tweed held many offices, and while throughout the 
sixties, he was, unchallenged, the strongest spirit of 
Tammany Hall, it was not until 1868, when he caused 
himself to be elected to the legislature at Albany, that 
he could point to himself as the one, sole domineering 
influence of that body. Then it was that his evilisms 
ran riot. Then it was he donated fifty thousand dol- 
lars to the poor; when his daughter's nuptials cost 
seven hundred thousand dollars; when he built his 
" Castle," still standing with its Norman battlements 
and ivied walls, on the banks of the Hudson; when the 
splendors of the Americus Club — Tweed's club — out- 
gleamed the Orient; and when in these things and 
others, all and sundry, Tweed re-enacted the criminal 
antics of a Nero before the fall. Pride precedeth over- 
throw, and puffballs puff but to be punctured and to 
explode. Alas! for our American Cjesar! His public 
was not of that innocuous and castrate inconsequence 



THE WAR ON TWEED. 205 

with those pathic hordes of Kome. Destruction de- 
scended with the rush of a storm, and the sweet echoes 
of his daughter's epithalamion were not died on the 
ear ere the roar of his downfall swept up every other 
sound besides. 

Years prior to that end, however, Kelly the 
" Honest," knowing the ill doing of Tweed, had at- 
tacked him for the robber that he was. And Eichard 
Croker was earliest and latest and most trusted at 
Kelly's shoulder in that strife. Kelly and Croker, and 
•with them such as Scannell and the latter's brother 
Florence, were quickly the first to assail Tweedism. 
They fought Tweed within the walls of Tammany, 
and they strove with him at the elections. 

Tweed went down in 1871 and '2. For the four 
years before, to their disgrace as time-servers be it writ- 
ten, those and all of them to be at last prominent in 
Tweed's taking-off were as well aware of Tweed's venal- 
ity and the looting of public treasure going forward, as 
on a day later when, evidence adduced, trials over and 
convictions had, Tweed lay dead in Ludlow. For four 
years these good folk knew him and his deeds, and 
never moved; while two of our excellent imprints 
shouted themselves hoarse with editorial urgings of a 
" Monument to Tweed." For four years our Choates 
and our Tildens, our Peckhams and our Noah Da vises, 
were fully informed of Tweed; and never one of them 
to move in condemnation. Kelly and Croker and the 
Scannells and others of their loyal tribe made manful 
war on Tweed. And while they did so the town, half- 
bribed, half-bullied, stood still and saw its pockets ran- 
sacked of the Ring. Never lived thieves to whose crimes 
came so many accessories before the fact as the Tweed 



206 RICHARD CROKER. 

thieves; the whole community, with the few exceptions 
of stubborn honor noted, were their accomplices. 

Those were bad, stained days, the Tweed days; they 
are days well gone and dead. They came sharp in the 
black wake of civil war. Take notice, you who read; 
War is ever corrupt. The moral disintegration at the 
rear is worse than the death at the front. Death — sim- 
ple, decent death — isn't such a disaster, mauger the 
hard assertions that Christians act and think and make 
against it. Death isn't understood; if it were, one 
would behold nothing in your catafalques save cars of 
triumph. Do you talk of the horrors of war? They 
are songs of sweetness to the horrors of peace, as one 
may learn who looks into an east-side tenement on any 
August night. The true horror of war lies in the 
moral degeneracy which grows on its trunk like rootless 
mistletoe on oak, and which makes thieves of folk who 
else had been honest save for those money temptations 
of contract-swindle and plunder which war placed in 
their ways. War is corrupt; and the canker of our civil 
war, central in Washington, projected an influence of 
sin on the government of this town. The New York 
city hour, as if in sympathy with the hour national, 
went reeling drunk with rottenness. 

Tweed was overborne, and died in his cage of Lud- 
low. The public was avenged. Nor were Tweed's 
robberies during the years of his bad domination the 
worst element of his rule. Those who opposed him too 
vigorously were not safe of life, liberty, and limb, 
Tweed controlled the courts, the public attorneys, the 
juries, the sheriff, and the police. Tweed was the law; 
his word was statute, he had but to lift his finger to 
cause its carrying out. Offensive partisanship was a 



OFFENSIVE PARTISANSHIP. 20 V 

" crime " of moment and serious sequence; and many 
an honest rebel against Tweed was taught a terror- 
lesson in proof of it. Hundreds of men innocent were 
sentenced and sent to terms of Sing Sing for crimes 
that never had commission. 

That man marked of the Ring and against whom 
" word had been sent out " — he who, by the success of 
his opposition or the truth he told, had grown danger- 
ous to the Ring — might be walking the street. A 
policeman's sudden hand would grip his shoulder. 

" Come with me," says the Tweed myrmidon in blue. 

" This is a mistake," cries the innocent one. 

He is wrong; it is no mistake; he is borne to the 
station. 

" What's the charge ? " asks the sergeant. 

" Robbery," replies the officer; " he stole a watch and 
here it is." And with this last word the watch is taken 
from the others pocket where the officer slipped it 
but a moment before. 

" Who complains against the prisoner? " asks the 
sergeant, as he continues to blotter down the particu- 
lars. 

" I do." The speaker is an individual on whom the 
prisoner's eyes have never rested — a mere hired per- 
jurer of the Ring. Of such false witness there were 
hundreds. Ring-trained, to make oath to order. 

" I do," repeats the creature, while the dazed quarry 
of this Ring-hunting dumbly stares. " The watch is 
mine. This man," pointing to the accused, " lifted it 
from my pocket. The officer saw him do it." 

Then followed trial, conviction, and sentence in mer- 
ciless quickstep. Then came the term in prison. It 
was longer or shorter, contingent on what power of 



208 RICHARD CROKER. 

harm to the Ring the victim possessed. If he were of 
slighter sort, a year; twenty, if he were manifest peril 
to the Ring. This process was styled " putting away "; 
and an upright many came to suffer therefrom. 

Ring-fears and Ring-revenges dictated these deeds. 
And when Sing Sing didn't promise entire Ring- 
security the man obnoxious was murdered. There 
were bravos at the beck of the Ring who would snuff 
out life on the slightest nod of the powers that were, 
and with as little of scruple as might attend the imbi- 
bition of a glass of rum. The victim was " waylaid by 
footpads," or " died by hands unknown," or even " com- 
mitted suicide," just as accident, or a word let fall, 
opened a door to that Ring jury at the inquest for a 
phrase of explanation. And that — the Coroner's re- 
turn — was the closing in of the crimson picture. The 
Ring murdered as well as robbed. And it robbed folk 
of liberty and good repute, while it robbed the town's 
strong box of its money. 

There is a story to tell — a story of murder and retri- 
bution. The story is germane to this work, for it por- 
trays conditions under the Ring. Eighteen hundred 
and sixty-nine was the year. Tweed and his crime- 
grimed coterie were at fullest head of power. There 
were two brothers, Scannells: Florence Scannell, aged 
twenty-three, and for two terms prior a member of the 
city council; and John Scannell, — of whom we have 
had former word in this book, — aged thirty, at that 
time holding no office, since of regard as the city's Fire 
Commissioner. The Scannells were folk of respect and 
note. Also they were forces of politics. The Scan- 
nells were among the most dauntless of the Ring's foes; 
they fought Tweedism by day and by night. Florence 



FLORENCE 8CANNELL. 209 

Scannell, from his place in the city council, was a 
menacing grief to the Ring. 

In December of 1869 Florence Scannell was in a can- 
vass for his third term, with victory — despite the 
Ring's worst efforts — assured. The Ring was des- 
perate. For two council terms Florence Scannell had 
been a blundering block in the paths of Ring license. 
Money couldn't buy him, it had been tried; threats were 
powerless, for recourse had been made to them. Nor 
did the time-worn trick of arrest and trial and sentence 
to Sing Sing on false charges offer certainty of success 
in the dangerous occasion of the Scannells. They 
were rich, prominent, of coolest courage; moreover, 
they were intrenched as behind ramparts in the friend- 
ships of a multitude. But the Ring was urged of a 
great need; Florence Scannell must be " stopped " at 
any bloody cost; he must not return to the council. 

And the " word " — that word which no man heard 
and all men understood — was sent among the Danites 
of the Ring; Florence Scannell must be dealt with. 
There was no plan; no suggestion of when, or how, or 
by whom the murder was to have accomplishment; 
that was left to the decision of event. But the 
" word " was in the ears of a dozen Ring assassins, any 
one of whom was to act on the first safe chance that 
proffered. 

Florence Scannell must die — die that the Ring might 
live in its crimes, uninterrupted. And the doom de- 
nounced of Florence Scannell went also to John Scan- 
nell; both were perilous folk, the Ring feared them, 
and both by Ring edict were devoted to death. 

John Scannell cared nothing for politics save what 
pride and joy he found in the triumphs of his brother. 



210 RICHARD CROKER. 

for whom he felt more than brother's love. He was 
little of the politician in the common city sense; his 
thought was for books. He was among the world's 
scholars of Shakspere. His pronounced attributes 
were tastes for romance and adventure. John Scan- 
nell came three centuries too late; he would have been 
feather for feather and to the glance of an eye the man 
with Drake and Ealeigh and Oxenham and Amyas 
Leigh in Kingsley's "Westward Ho!" 

It was registration in December, 1869. The vote of 
the city — the local elections were then held late in 
December — was making that preliminary answer to its 
name required of the law. The Ring, set to the de- 
feat of Florence Scannell by all foul methods since it 
might not be fairly brought about, was with the use of 
repeaters falsely swelling the registration whereon to 
lay foundation for the final steal. Florence Scannell, 
together with John Scannell, was busily about in 
efforts to prevent these wrongs of the Ring. 

There was one, Donahue, who kept a drinking place 
at Twenty-third Street and Second Avenue. This 
Donahue was himself of the Ring's Danites. He had 
killed his man and nearly slain his second. His drink- 
ing den was a harbor for Ring criminals. 

Donahue had office ambitions. He argued with a 
dark sagacity that were he to " remove " Florence 
Scannell, the Ring would not only protect him from 
the law — which in that day was the Ring's will — but 
prefer him to some coign of party height and fatness. 

On registration day Donahue's resort was made head- 
quarters for those imported " repeaters " who were to 
be used in that ward. There were fourscore or more 
of these ruffians in the room to the rear of Donahue's 



TBE MURDER. 211 

bar. Florence Scannell, accompanied by John Scan- 
nell, on the scent of fraud, came into Donahue's. 
Florence Scannell, aware of the whereabouts of the 
" repeaters," walked to the door of the rear room 
and sought to enter. The door was locked. Donahue 
stood behind the bar. 

" Don't go in there! " cried Donahue to Florence 
Scannell as the latter tried the door. 

There was murder in Donahue's heart. It glowed 
dully in his bleary eye; and had the Scannells been a 
whit less brave, and therefore a bit more cautious, they 
might have noted it. 

" Don't go in there," said Donahue. 

Florence Scannell, baffled by the locked door, turned 
and stood against the bar. His elbows rested on it; 
his back was to the bar and to Donahue. One in the 
room with the " repeaters " unlocked the door. John 
Scannell pushed it open and entered among them. 
About one hundred men were therein gathered. The 
entrance of John Scannell fell like a fear upon these 
lawbreakers. They deemed him the advance of jus- 
tice in pursuit of them. With that, many sought to 
be rid of the place; there was a deal of commotion; the 
door through which John Scannell had entered was 
closed in the stampede. 

At the top of the hubbub a shot rang forth in the 
barroom. John Scannell, closed into the rear room, 
couldn't see and would only guess the reason of that 
firing. Donahue, seizing the safe advantage of 
Florence Scannell's position and John Scannell's 
absence from the scene, had shot the younger Scan- 
nell in the back. There was no word of warning; be- 
tween them passed no looks of difference; murder 



212 RICHARD CROKER. 

cold and safe and cowardly it was, and the victim's first 
touch of his peril was a bullet in his back. The effect 
was to paralyze; Florence Scannell slipped to the floor 
without falling, and as John Scannell rushed in, his 
eye rested first on his brother half lying against the 
base of the bar. In front of him stood a lesser thug of 
the Ring. 

John Scannell's hand sought his pistol, a 44-caliber 
Colt's. There was a flash and a crash; the Ring thug 
fell, shot through the neck. 

"John, it was Donahue," whispered Florence Scan- 
nell. 

John Scannell sprang to the front door. Donahue, 
fear-spurred, was a block away, pistol in hand, running 
with all speed. 

To see was to act; an instant and John Scannell was 
in pursuit. The glance he gave his brother as he 
passed told him that the latter was wounded to the 
death. Whereupon a great hunger of revenge seized 
him and swallowed him up. 

Donahue made what speed he might, but a vicious 
life was clogging him. His pursuer, perfect of habit, 
was hate-winged with the one vast thought of ven- 
geance. The sharp chase of John Scannell was over- 
whelming the murderer. 

Donahue, whose frightened eye each moment swept 
his shoulder, beheld his fate as it was descending upon 
him. Despair had almost claimed him. There was a 
police station near at hand. If Donahue could but win 
to that, he would be safe; the police — the Ring police — 
would protect him. They were allies as well as officers. 
This thought upheld the murderer. He begged of all 
his energies; they granted strength; he panted to the 



JOHN 8C ANN ELL'S VOW. 213 

door. Scannell's pistol cracked, and Donahue fell in 
among the police. The Scannell bullet had shattered 
an arm. It was a long shot; still Hate and Revenge 
have eyes of hawks; the bullet reached, though it only 
wounded. 

John Scannell, heavy of heart, carried his brother to 
the hospital. Then he gave bail on charges of shoot- 
ing both the Ring ruffian, whom he mistook for the 
murderer, and Donahue wounded in the door of the 
police. Donahue, the assassin of Florence Scannell, 
was not arrested. Such w^s the hardihood, not to say 
the power, of the Ring. 

Florence Scannell lived eight months and was dying 
every moment. Paralyzed— for the bullet had struck 
his spine— he reposed on a cot, without motion and 
while life wasted away. 

Florence Scannell was powerless to move, but he 
could talk. And each day he besought John Scannell, 
who hung over him, to cry off that vendetta which he 
had sworn against Donahue. 

"If you die," said John Scannell, "and the law 

doesn't punish Donahue, I shall have his life. If the 

law fails, I will myself take that justice which is mine." 

For eight months the dying Florence wrestled with 

his brother for the life of him who was his murderer. 

But his strivings were of no avail. The resolves of 

John Scannell had set as relentlessly as water-chilled 

steel. He would have life for life; an eye for an eye 

and a tooth for- a tooth. There was something ethnic 

; in the grim resolve of John Scannell; and his gray eyes, 

I soft enough with sympathy as he bent above his 

I brother, turned agate-hard with the first naming of 

\ Donahue. 



S14 UlCBAItD CROKER. 

While Florence Scannell, bound to his cot, was 
dying, the election took place. In the teeth of the 
Eing he was successful. But the Ring promised 
to rectify that " error." On the " official " count 
Florence Scannell would be defeated. John Scannell 
heard this crooked news. 

There was one who stood for the wisdom of Tweed. 
He will not here be named. Suffice it that he was the 
Tweed intelligence; the potent one behind the throne 
of the Ring. 

This wise one, and potential, was alone at his desk. 
It was the scant, gray afternoon of the December 
solstice. The door opened and John Scannell stood 
before him. He wore the tranquil air that was com- 
mon with him. 

" I owe you an apology," said Scannell to the po- 
tential one, " for this unannounced invasion. But I 
had a most important word to communicate." 

" What is it?" queried the potential one, not much 
at ease with his formidable visitor, calmly the finished 
gentleman though that visitor might be. " What is 
this that you should tell me?" 

" My brother," observed Scannell, " lies nigh unto 
death. There is small, if any, hope of his recovery. 
He was fairly elected at the polls. Despite that fact, 
your corrupt board is about, officially, to ' count him 
out.' My thought is that if my brother were given the 
certiiicate of election it would be as medicine in wine 
to him. It might aid him to be well." 

" Very right," replied the potential one; " I'll look 
into the matter and let you hear from me in a few 
days." 

John Scannell closed the door which had stood ajar. 



THE MATTER CONFIDENTAL. 215 

When he again turned to the potential one his pistol 
was in one hand and his watch in. the other. 

" I will give you one minute," said Scannell, and his 
tones were cool and true, " wherein to promise that 
my brother will not be robbed of his election. If the 
minute dies wanting that assurance, I'll kill you where 
you are." 

In the gray depths of those eyes bent upon him, the 
man of power read his death half told. The whole 
dread story would be finished unless within the pent 
spaces of a minute he interrupted its recital with a 
promise. It was fate; and the one potential doffed his 
hat to it. He promised. Scannell returned his pistol 
and was about to depart. 

" I do not doubt your word," said he to the potential 
one, " for I do not doubt that you are wise enough to 
keep it." 

" I'll keep my word," faltered the other, " but I re- 
quest you to say nothing of our interview." 

For the first time since his brother lay with Dona- 
hue's bullet in his life, the least shadow of a smile fell 
across the face of John Scannell. 

" You need take no alarm," he observed; " I'll re- 
gard our interview as confidential." 

Florence Scannell was given the election; the man 
of potency had kept his word. Also, as reward of it, 
the potential one at full threescore still dwells among 
us in quiet ease and peace. 

Those months to follow the day when he was shot 
down by Donahue went tiptoeing into the past, and the 
hour of death came on for Florence Scannell. Worn 
of pain and starved by sickness, he was only the 
shade of what he was. John Scannell was with him, 



216 RICHARD CROKER. 

as he had been day and night. The one dying, too 
weak to speak aloud, motioned his brother to draw- 
nearer. 

" John," he whispered, " I shall not live an hour. 
And before I die I want to say a word to you. I feel 
differently about Donahue; and now that I die I want 
to leave his punishment to his conscience. If he were 
here, and I held his life in my hand, I'd give it back to 
him. John, you're my oldest brother and my best and 
oldest friend. You never refused me in my life. I 
have one last request. I want you to spare Donahue." 

" Florrie," replied his brother, and the tears were 
wet on his face — " Florrie, so surely as you die and I 
live, I shall kill Donahue." 

There was a moment's pause. Then: 

" John," whispered the other, " you have broken my 
heart." 

And he died without further word. 

On the cot was the dead, and by its side knelt the liv- 
ing; and there John Scannell made his vow anew that, 
be it late or be it soon, be it far or be it near, yet should 
his vengeance find a time. He would have life for life; 
he would pay with death his debt of death. 

John Scannell made a visit to Donahue. His hope 
was to force him forth to battle; he would not kill him 
as his brother was slain; Donahue should have his 
chance. Scannell was coldly steady when he found 
his man. 

" My brother is dead," said he, " and you murdered 
him. If you had killed him in honest quarrel and with 
his face towards you, I would not harbor thought 
against you. But this was murder — murder plain and 
cowardly. You killed him when he had no differ- 



DONAHUE'S FEAR. 217 

ence with you, and while his back was turned. For 
what you did there's no excuse, nor shall you find 
escape. Yet I will deal better by you than you 
did with him. You shall see your death and defend 
yourself against me; your hand shall hold every ad- 
vantage that I hold in mine. You must come and 
fight. You should not hesitate; you are not new to 
weapons nor to taking life. You have already killed 
two men, and dearly wounded one. And you must 
come with me. To help you to decision, I promise 
it's your only door to safety. You've killed my brother. 
You must now kill me or I shall kill you." 

Donahue turned white as paper. Donahue was bold, 
but there was that so inveterate in the one before him, 
he seemed so fraught of all that crushed and killed, 
that Donahue shrank from him as from a mystery of 
midnight. Donahue smelled his death off Scannell as 
kine smell in the wind the unborn storm. Donahue 
refused to meet with Scannell. 

Four days had passed. Donahue, in company of two 
of his adherents, was walking in Fourth Avenue. 
Scannell leaped from a carriage and approached Don- 
ahue. As he came near he called to the other: 

" Get ready; you are not to be killed without de- 
fense." 

Donahue turned and fled; he was gone in a twinkling. 
Scannell made no attempt to shoot nor follow; his 
thought was still to have his man at bay. 

There was that to happen which would show 
Scannell that his enemies were not so frank as he. 
He was waylaid on Twenty-eighth Street by seven 
bravos of the Ring. The notorious Owney Geoghegan 
was at their van. Their " orders " were to slay Scan- 



218 RICHARD CROKER. 

nell on sight. The seven poured a volley against him. 
But his own pistol spoke with theirs; and as he fell 
with three wounds, a bullet-convulsed brigand re- 
mained to bear him bleeding company. The others 
fled. As they ran, the indomitable Scannell raised his 
shot body and fired twice. Each bullet stopped an 
enemy. There were no deaths to be the result of this 
attempted assassination. Scannell recovered, as did 
also the wounded trio of would-be murderers. The 
Eing still sought to compass his death. The Ring 
again " ordered " it, but there was now none among 
the Danites of a courage to hunt this Hector. 

Following this last collision John Scannell disap- 
peared. Some there were to say that he'd left the 
town; others told that he was still here, but disguised; 
the thing sure, however, was that none might make 
certain of aught concerning him. And with that, not 
alone Donahue, but Tweed and Sweeny and Hall and 
others of the Ring's highest, went nervously lest their 
lives, too, were written in the books of Scannell. 

Donahue remained, for the great part, out of town. 
He crept to his home at intervals to lie in hiding for 
a day or two; then he would flit again. A fugitive day 
and night, Donahue's every moment was fevered of 
fear, and his life already fallen into a semi-eclipse of 
death. 

It was a few months following the attack of the seven 
Danites on Scannell. Donahue came secretly to his 
home. The night following, with two others, Donahue 
was about in one of the more retired streets. Sud- 
denly, and wanting sign or warning, one whom none 
recognized stood before them in the gloom. Not 
a Avord was spoken; there was the bluff bark of a Der- 



Statue of St. Tammany, from the FAgADE of Tammany Hall. 



A MAN AND A DERRINOER. 219 

ringer, and Donahue fell, shot through the body. The 
stranger disappeared like a dark ghost, as he had come 
like one. 

Donahue, tenacious to live, got well of this wound as 
of the first; but before the fact was abroad, he had gone 
where no one knew. 

It is a curious thought, and one which tells for 
the self-centered sort of Scannell, that none dared 
speak to him of Donahue. Eichard Croker, his nearest 
friend, was asked to interpose his influence with Scan- 
nell. Croker shook his head. 

" I'd give all I'm worth," he said, " and ten years off 
my life, if the matter might end as it is. It's bad; and 
more will make it worse. But " — and Croker paused — 
"■ but I can't speak to him. I best know John Scannell 
of all his friends; I've no closer friend myself than he; 
but I don't know him well enough for that." 

Now come we to the last act of this tragedy; a 
tragedy born of conditions peculiar to the dynasty of 
Tweed. The time was November of 1872. The day 
was Saturday. Lacking a fortnight, three years had 
slipped away on the slow tides of eternity since the 
murder of Florence Scannell. Donahue was never 
seen these days, and seldom heard of. Now and again 
a half whisper would go about that Donahue had been 
in town, but was fled again. John Scannell, on his 
part, was about in his own affairs, calm, equal, and cold; 
he never smiled and never spoke of Donahue. 

It was the evening of the day. In a basement at 
the northwest corner of Broadway and Twenty-eighth 
Street, and under the present " Fifth Avenue Theater," 
was a poolroom. John Scannell, who was walking in 
Broadway at the time, paused and entered. Donahue 



220 RICHARD CROKER. 

was not in his thoughts; he believed him full one 
thousand miles away and more, for a waif-word blew 
about that Donahue's refuge was Havana. Scannell's 
fires of vengeance glowed as hotly as ever, but by long 
waiting they had become banked. In the lapse of years 
the tooth of sharp expectancy had dulled. Scannell 
wasn't longing and looking to find his foe with every 
moment, as was earlier true. 

John Scannell entered the poolroom. There were 
full two hundred in the place. Scannell saw only one. 
Before him stood Donahue. That man who had slain 
his brother, and for whom he had hoped and hunted, 
was delivered into his hand. Almost three years had 
sped since John Scannell beheld his brother lying in 
bloody helplessness, and worse than dead, by the hand 
of this man. The picture was with him still. Almost 
three years had gone — more than one thousand days 
and one thousand nights — and each day he had re- 
sworn himself to vengeance; and each night he had 
prayed that the hour might come. It was here, and he 
welled with happiness. The murky glory of the mo- 
ment filled his heart; his pleasure overflowed in 
laughter. 

John Scannell gazed on Donahue. The dogged mo- 
ments seemed to pause. Scannell's face shone with a 
smile. His eyes were lighted brightly up 3^et pleas- 
antly, with the lamps of a white hate. Donahue, 
opposite, was as one of stone, and with a cheek of 
ashes. Donahue had courage; but it was of bludgeon 
kind; it would not carry him against this man of joy 
and death. Donahue couldn't command himself, he was 
in a dream of horror. Gripped in his right hand, and 
hidden in his coat, was a heavy pistol. It was found 



DEATH AND HIS PREY. 221 

frozen in his fingers when he was dead. Donahue 
pointed this weapon at Scannell through his coat; but 
his hand was nerveless, he couldn't fire. Twice he 
called in a dry, hoarse voice like a raven's croak: 

"John!" 

And again, " John! " 

Donahue was calling to one who should have been 
with him. Scannell smiled only the more. The 
blood of his brother was calling to him. 

John Scannell still looked on Donahue while the 
moments snailed away. Scannell reflected of Donahue 
as with a comic lightness that matched the smile on 
his lips. This was what he thought: 

" They say you're bullet-proof, and that no lead will 
kill you. Perhaps this is true. And I'll make a 
promise in your favor. If you live through this — if 
you get by me this time, I'll call my vengeance off — I'll 
let the dead past bury its dead." 

Something of that was running in the mind of Scan- 
nell. Then his thought went to other matters. He 
could see that Donahue grasped in his hand a pistol. 
He hoped that Donahue would shoot. Scannell cared 
not if he died or no; he was sure in his heart that he 
would live to kill Donahue, and that was all his prayer. 
From the first Scannell spoke never a word; Donahue 
at intervals called: 

"John!" huskily. 

Then a third thought came to Scannell. " My pistol 
carries the heaviest of balls. When I shoot this man, 
the bullet will go through and through and wound 
or kill one of those behind." 

There was truth in this; for, as Scannell stood in the 
door, the onlookers, as pale as Donahue, — for each fore- 



222 RICHARD CROKER. 

saw the sequel, — were crowded to the rear, and in the 
line of fire. This would not do; Scannell wanted no 
man's blood but one's. 

Scannell began to pace slowly around Donahue. The 
other, fear-stiffened and incapable, could only turn 
to meet him. Scannell ceased not to smile. His im- 
winking eyes did not waver from the eyes of Donahue. 
The latter was held as by a spell. Slowly Scannell 
went about Donahue to the right, never widening, 
never lessening the distance. At the last he had forced 
Donahue cross-wise of the room, with naught behind 
him save the safe, insensate wall. The time had come. 

Not until then did Scannell's hand seek his weapon. 
And he went slowly after it, with pauses full of pleas- 
ant hesitation. Scannell still tacitly called Donahue to 
action. It was not to be. Donahue was as rigidly 
helpless as a statue of ice. With iron deliberation 
Scannell drew his pistol. Donahue, licking a dry lip, 
stood at gaze and as one planet-struck. 

" Bang! " 

Between those murderous eyes which had lined the 
shot that stole his brother's life, Scannell's revenge 
went crashing. Donahue crippled forward, half- 
turned, and with a sob, which broke on Scannell like a 
tune of music, fell headlong down. 

John Scannell looked on his prone enemy for a 
moment while his bosom filled with the tides of a 
generous peace. It was as though a stone had been 
rolled from his heart. Then he went slowly forth, and 
no hour had seemed so sweet nor the world so bright 
before. 

An officer touched his elbow. Scannell turned and 
followed him. The officer led the way. The dead 



VENGEANCE IS MINE! 223 

Donahue was where he fell. A captain of police stood 
close at hand. 

" Do you see your work? " asked the captain. 

" I do." The sudden sparkle to glance in Scannell's 
eyes showed how burned the fires to be kindled in a 
brother's breast by a brother's murder. "I do; I see 
my work; observe how I approve it." 

" Bang! " 

And Scannell sent a bullet through the dead Dona- 
hue as he had sent one through the living Donahue be- 
fore. The body jumped on the floor with the springy 
concussion of the shot, and then lay still. The ven- 
geance of John Scannell was full. 



XIV. 

JOHN KELLY. 

Statesman, yet friend to truth ! of soul sincere, 
In actions faithful, and in honor clear ! 
Who broke no promise, served no private end, 
Who gained no title and who lost no friend. 

— Pope. 

John Scannell was made acquit by jury for the 
taking-off of Donahue. The argument to lead to his 
enlargement was the full pistol fast in the death-grip 
of Donahue's right hand. It assumed a peril for Scan- 
nell, and by that word the twelve men vouchsafed him 
free and blameless. 

From this acquittal of Scannell an essay might be 
reared. The twelve who heard and made decision were 
born to the manor, all and each Americans. Their an- 
cestry for more than one remove in every instance was 
American. Had it been a jury of folk emanate of 
Europe an opposite settlement might well have been 
arrived at. Your American is a sentimentalist; your 
European, comparatively, is not. The latter lacks 
in imagination. And he has been adjusted and re- 
adjusted in all his rights and wrongs, for over two 
thousand years, by force and effort of the law. Wliere- 
fore his natural thought has been revamped and made 
over until his notion of justice is his knowledge of law. 
If it be law, it is right to your European; and thereby 
the converse of " wrong, if illegal," is equally alert. 

Your American with imagination, and therefore 



THE UNELASTIC ALIEN. 225 

ideals, and therefore sentiment, does not adhere to this 
theory of Europe. He has his law; yes. And he will 
follow it — with limitations. Your American has his 
law of murder builded on models English. It is no 
more, in its terms or their construction, gifted with 
gates of escape than are the laws of England, Germany, 
or France. But back in the recesses of American sen- 
timentalism there are maintained exceptions. These 
make a safety for many who, by strict letter being 
transgressors, would otherwise be lost. 

In this gloomy business of homicide, your man of 
Europe, fitting law to fact, would cut and baste and 
stitch a guilty verdict as a tailor might a garment. But 
without and above and beyond strict terms of statute 
your American can understand a justice. The reading 
of his law would grant one no relief. But were one to 
slay him who had murdered a brother, or wronged a 
mother, a sister, or a wife, your American will step to 
his defense despite a statute — do a justice and undo a 
law. Your unelastic European has no such good flexi- 
bilities. 

True, it is all sentiment. Americans are the most 
sentimental of the tribes. More than half the world's 
sentiment is American and north of the tropics. Senti- 
ment is not here written as the opposite of common 
sense. Bather is it employed to distinguish that last 
commodity in a character, sublimated and etherealized. 
Common sense of the sort that goes about of week days 
on four feet — and a most excellent fashion of sense is 
this — is never showy and has no brilliantisms. Its 
motto is " Progress with Safety." Eisk is crime in the 
eyes of that common r3ense. It will face danger and be 
coolly intrepid, if forced by conditions which listen to 



226 tttCHAtit) CROKEn. 

no refusal. But it will never rap at the door of a great 
peril of free will; and that, no matter the profit or the 
glory to be derivative of the deed. Wherefore Senti- 
ment is ever the warrior, or the poet, or the singer, or 
the lover at his best. And your American replies to 
every one of these. 

And that is natural enough; a philosopher of species 
would have foretold it four centuries ago, at the be- 
ginning of the Western settlement. America from the 
first has been fed for her citizenry with the picked 
peoples of Europe. This is true, and will be while 
steerage passage to these shores obtains. The emi- 
grant is self-selected; and thereby is he the best 
selection. Who is there of Ireland, England, Scotland, 
Norway, Germany, or where you will, among those poor 
and stint of lore and fortune, to gather the courage, 
the enterprise, and the money to come to America, and 
not be best and strongest of his race? The clods, the 
weak, those of a dull dispirit, live and die in Europe; 
the choice among them come to us. Thus for a quar- 
tette of centuries we have been gaining to ourselves the 
bravery, the imagination, and the sentimentalism of 
the elder, other world. And conditions here — condi- 
tions of nature — rough and honest and manly, have 
magnified these attributes and strengthened them. 

American existence has ever been a combat. Life 
has been a Peace with. War. For two hundred years 
our frontier was a line of savage battle. Is it, then, — 
for one instance of racial trend, — marvel, when one re- 
flects on strain and stock and education, that your 
American is the natural soldier? From the beginning, 
life in America has moved among dangers whereof your 
man of Europe never dreamed. And it has bred a 



THE AMERICAN WARRIOR. 227 

hardy optimism of the physical in American folk. 
Does your American go to war? He goes to kill some- 
body. The thought that he may be himself slain is 
second; it is dim and not much dwelt upon. 

Your European, criticising what he might not equal, 
charges this optimism of your American about to 
war with being braggadocio, and is rhetorical over an 
American tendency to " underestimate a foe." It is 
wiser, and more to one's final profit in blood, to under- 
estimate than overestimate a foe. If one may not make 
exact anticipations, at least one should give one's self 
the benefit of doubts. If you will but underestimate an 
enemy while he overestimates you, and though you 
have no more than one about your standards for three 
with his, you may still dismiss" alarm. You shall con- 
quer with little efl'ort and still less of risk. Courage is 
belief in one's self. 

Bacon has somewhat to write anent this in his 
Twenty-ninth Essay. Says the scribbling Chancellor: 
" Walled Townes, Stored Arcenalles and Armouries, 
Goodly Eaces of Horses, Chariots of Warre, Elephants, 
Ordnance, x\rtillery, and the like; all this is but a 
sheepe in a lion's skin, except the breed and disposition 
of the People be stout and warlike. Nay, number (it 
selfe) in Armies importeth not much, where the people 
is of a weake courage; For as Virgil saith, ' It never 
troubles the Wolfe how many the Sheepe be.' " The 
world had some American proof of Bacon's accuracy 
of thought when Schley's fleet, being boat for boat and 
gun for gun no unfair match for its adversaries, utterly 
destroyed — root and stalk and standing grass — the 
Spaniards at Santiago, and in short order truly burned 
them from the sea. 



228 RICHARD CROKER. 

Sentiment is an excellent goods — nationally it comes 
to be the backbone of popular Avdll. And while 
America leads in sentiment, she will command in 
ever}' brave thing else. And if braggadocio as 
a term means to make claim when one cannot 
make accomplishment, then America is not brag- 
gart. Her record for war and for cold valor, by any 
average to be developed for the past century and a 
quarter, tops a world's tables. All the wars of Na- 
poleon, and all that has since happened of carnage 
kind, to or in Europe, wouldn't make a companion piece 
for a picture of our civil war. And if bloodshed is to 
be the test, there was battle after battle of that civil 
war with counts of killed and wounded to go from 
twenty-five to sixty-six per cent, of all engaged, or two 
or three or four times the blood-rate of such fields as 
Marengo, Solferino, Austerlitz, and Waterloo. 

Aside from considerations of an aroused sentimen- 
talism, one may verily believe that life in America in- 
duces a fraternal and withal a filial love, better, 
stronger, more vivid than one finds abroad. No- 
where, save in Ireland or the Highlands of the Scotch, 
does the clan or family spirit burn so fiercely as in 
America. Go to our South, which holds the truest and 
cleanest strain of your American with least of alien 
crossings. There you will have instant teaching that 
war on a member means war with the family, even imto 
cousins of fourth and fifth degrees. The American 
loyalty of blood to blood has its fair parallel in the clan 
spirit of a colony of hornets. And while it may be a 
whit less obvious of manifestation in Northern regions 
than in those Southern whereof I have fore-A\Titten, 
this loyalty of the family is abundant and pronounced 



JOHN KELLY RETURNS. 229 

among Americans wherever they are found. And, 
when one digs to the bottom with his twelve native- 
born folk of the jury, it was that excusing clan spirit, 
and nothing more besides, that worked acquittance for 
John Scannell. 

When Tweed was destroyed, John Kelly was in 
Europe. Tammany had fallen in ruins. While many, 
like Kelly and Croker and the Scannells, of Tammany 
had been fighting Tweed from the earliest hour, the 
organization, because of Tweed its head, was crushed 
in his downfall. 

It was Eichard Croker who urged Kelly in Europe to 
return. He put it to him as a duty to reorganize and 
rehabilitate Tammany Hall. Kelly came back and 
assumed the headship. The outlook was darker than 
was Washington's at Valley Forge. Tammany Hall was 
disrated, disgraced; to be of its muster was not a royal 
password to high political repute. Wherefore two- 
thirds of its membership deserted, and reared from 
time to time against it such rival keeps of Democratic 
pride and strength as the Irving Hall and the County 
Democracies. With this the situation, what might 
Tammany do? Surely there must be works of re- 
pentance following Tweed; a past must be lived down, 
and a public granted time wherein to forgive and to 
forget, ere anything like majorities at the polls or 
ascendency in party conclaves could be hoped for by 
Tammany Hall. 

Kelly was the ideal leader for that sorrowful time. 
If Tammany had been in power, owning a supremacy, 
Kelly would have gone backwards. Kelly would not 
have accommodated himself to a day of Tammany 
prosperity. He was too much the theorist, too much 



230 RICHARD CROKER. 

addicted to principle and too little to policy, to succeed 
in a time of success. To put it bluntly, Kelly was too 
honest. But when on the reefs of disaster — peculiarly 
the disaster of disrepute — Kelly of all names was the 
man for the hour. His honesty, his courage, his char- 
acter above reproach, were admirable as wrecking aids 
to refloat and repair the castaway organization. 

Tammany at that moment didn't need a leader that 
could win, for of victory there was no hope. In the 
dry dock your bark wants a ship carpenter, not a cap- 
tain to sail her round the world. And Tammany, fol- 
lowing Tweed, must be dry-docked. In the hospital 
your soldier, wounded, needs a surgeon, not a general 
to lead him to the charge. And Tammany, bleeding with 
the wounds of Tweed, must go to the hospital. With 
the case as painted, " Honest " John Kelly was that 
one best endowed for the emergency. He was a ship 
carpenter of party, rather than a sailor; a better sur- 
geon than general in a war of politics. It took John 
Kelly years to mend and make Tammany over and 
strengthen it, with honest men and folk of character, to 
a point where the public would re-intrust it with affairs. 
But Kelly did it, and there is none on the pages of 
Tammany to whom more of honor and of praise is due 
than Kelly. With his quality of honesty and the great 
respect a public held for him, Kelly doctored and 
cherished and conserved Tammany, broken and 
wounded to all but the death with Tweed, back to 
health and power and life, when in other hands than 
his the organization would have perished. 

But Kelly had his sides of weakness. Kelly was a 
soul of theory — an abstractionist more than a man of 
practice. He cared all for a principle and nothing for 



THE TOO-HONEST MAN. 231 

a policy. One may be a philosopher, or a philan- 
thropist, or an angel, and give way to these virtues. 
But one cannot on such terms be a victory-winning 
Chandos of politics. Look in the average human face, 
and particularly, glance in the face political. What 
does one see? Hog and wolf in struggle for a mas- 
tery, with the hog a bit the better of the two. Kelly 
was too fair, too honest, too loyal. He looked for these 
traits in equal turn in others. Thus was he cheated, 
disappointed. 

And Kelly, thus morally excellent, was wrong. 
From standpoints of ethics, Kelly was admirable; from 
those of triumph at the polls, he was buried in error. To 
be sure, and as has been said, in the day of Kelly, when 
no door opened to the least of chance for Tam- 
many to rise, what were Kelly's defects of leadership 
came to be no harm. Tammany was doomed, follow- 
ing Tweed, to do a proper penance. It must be, even 
in its own party, a hewer of wood and a drawer of 
water until redeemed. Caesar, after Tweed, couldn't 
have conquered with Tammany. Wherefore, as writ- 
ten, Kelly's infirmities of chiefship came to no loss; 
and, since all one might hope to accomplish was a trifle 
day by day of better standing for Tammany, they 
really worked for good. 

Still, whether it be Kelly or another, he is wrong 
who in those sterner matters of the world, and which 
are distinguished from what constitutes one's religion 
and one's pleasure by the name of business — this in- 
cludes politics — believes but to be deceived, trusts only 
to be defrauded, and whose loyalty has naught save 
treason as its lone reward. That is what one means 
when one tells that Kelly was too fair, too honest, too 



232 RICHARD CROKER. 

loyal. One can't afford a sentimental extravagance 
more than one may a money one. It leads even to the 
bankruptcy of Hope itself. To quote it from the lips 
of a gray gambler, — though he would start at the 
term, — evilly experienced and sapient of much sin: 

" You can't afford to play a fairer or more liberal 
system with a man than he plays with you. If it be a 
game at cards and he cheats, your sole s afety lies in two 
courses. You must cheat him or quit. Luck in the 
long run will range equally; and if he is to add his skill 
to his luck, and his roguery to both, while you are made 
tp depend on the two first with no help from the latter, 
he'll defeat you. To reduce what I mean to an example 
of dollars and cents, the statement might be put in 
this way: If you give a man five hundred dollars every 
time he gives you four hundred, he'll break you, though 
you carry to the transaction the gold of Solomon or 
Standard Oil." 

John Kelly was one readily deceived and as quick to 
trust as a child. There is this difference between Kelly 
and Croker. Kelly seemed to distrust, and trusted; 
Croker seems to trust, and his suspicion is never 
asleep. 

It is marvelous, with his experience, and the rough, 
fierce, stormy school of life wherein he grew, that Kelly 
was a no-better reader of political men. He would not 
and could not be brought to see a treason by proof short 
of its dagger in his heart, and then it was too late. 
Kelly should have been more a gardener of distrust and 
cultivated suspicion as a tree. Old Louis the Eleventh 
was of an opposite kidney. It was this cunning King 
who soliloquized — " Treason! She sits at our feasts; 
she sparkles in our bowls; she wears the beards of our 



LOUIS THE ELEVENTH. 233 

councilors, the smiles of our courtiers, the crazy laugh 
of our jesters, — above all, she lies hid under the 
friendly air of an enemy reconciled. Louis of Orleans 
trusted John of Burgundy; he was murdered in the Rue 
Barbette. John of Burgundy trusted the faction of 
Orleans; he was murdered on the bridge of Montereau. 
I will trust no one — no one." 

Confidence — I state but general truths — confidence 
in politicians is pearls before swine. One who abides 
afar from the big party tempests — who dwells apart 
from the storm-centers of politics, and who, natheless, 
is of a mood to know the kind and sort of politicians 
— may be granted a helpful hint. In politics there are 
two classes: the "Warwick and the King, the manager 
and the candidate, the potter and the clay. Of the 
second, if one cannot come by some specimen of 
one's own to study, one may have much clear under- 
standing from a close and apprehensive contemplation 
of the hog. It is not true that every office-hunter is 
porcine, but he is the exception who is not. 

Men have double natures, personal and political. 
The man-political is never the man-personal. He who 
in his character of politician is the apex of piggish 
voracity, lacking scruple of honesty or grace of grati- 
tude; who, wanting courage and a spoil to cowardice, 
will with the flush of danger desert his cause and com- 
rade both, is oft and frequently, when taken apart from 
politics and upon grounds of private, fair existence, dis- 
covered liberal, true, and brave to word and friend. As 
a politician, however, he recalls the sty-people and one 
may truly have his portrait from the pigs. 

Would you know the politician? Then, briefly, the 
hog! One should study the swine in his pen-fold and 



234 RICHARD CROKER. 

bear witness to him as he goeth about and filleth his 
mouth with the straws of gladness! Your hog is fero- 
cious, and will devour an unguarded and inadvertent 
infant, should such fall in his wa)\ He is craven to 
the point which flies shrieking from the least and 
puniest attack. He is pertinacious without valor; ob- 
stinate without bravery; cruel, selfish, egotistical, with- 
out dash of liberal, frank courage. Nor is there obli- 
gation in your hog. Feed him from youth to age, and 
though he may know he has these favors from your 
hands — for your hog, mind you! is not without sagacity 
and will yell for food at the suggestive sight of you — yet 
will he never bear you gratitude nor love, for all you 
bring him. Dogs and horses are a different folk. 
They have hearts as well as memories. 

There is another sublime thing about your hog. He 
is led by appetite; never by reason. His thought of 
right is his thought of want, and what he desires is 
what to him is Just. So far is he ruled by appetite, to 
the abeyance of reason, that he is proof against lessons 
of pain. Your hog may wend thievishly to your gar- 
den thirty times; you may set corrective dogs on him 
thirty times; singing with fear and grief, a dog swing- 
ing to each ear, he will come from his vandalage thirty 
times. And then clear but the way before him; call 
back your dogs; and, within such space as one may 
count a score, your hog will return to the garden for 
the thirty-first time. He knows that it means trouble 
and a cataract of curs. But he goes. Disaster is no 
teacher to your hog! 

Such is the hog; such also, for rule, is your office- 
seeker; such he has been, and such, doubtless, he will 
continue to the end. And Kelly, fighting with, sur- 



THE TAMMANY MOSES. 935 

rounded by, and herdsman to such squealing litter, 
shoald have known his cattle better. Kelly would trust 
and be deceived; repose a confidence, only to be 
betrayed. 

And then on him who cheated he would make war. 
It was thus that Kelly fought with Tilden, with Robin- 
son, with one hundred more of weaker moment. Great 
or small, giant or dwarf, Kelly, once deceived by him, 
was his implacable foe. And for that, as we've beheld, 
the Circe of politics turns all who seek her, and 
particularly those of candidational circles, into swine, 
Kelly met ever that ingratitude and selfishness and 
coward trustlessness which are the Jewels to adorn 
swinishness. And so Kelly was in perennial hot water, 
and each day beheld the swelling of his feuds, while 
peace grew less and less. His enemies multiplied, while 
his strength decreased. It told against Tammany in 
the practical way of politics. The organization took 
no prizes; nor were its views of vogue nor deep concern 
with party. 

As comfort to counter this, Tammany, chastened 
with little power and morally excellent with much 
weakness, was rapidly regaining that decent, sweet re- 
pute which Tweed had in this or that part tarnished or 
destroyed. Kelly was the Moses of Tammany Hall. 
He led it forth of that Eg}'pt of 111 where it had toiled 
in the venal brickyards of Tweed. He was with it in the 
desert of No-hope, and for fourteen years upheld it and 
kept it compact against enemies without as well as 
within the Democracy. 

John Kelly throughout his captaincy had one ad- 
vantage — a pleasant one, and say the least — over 
Richard Croker. Tammany and Kelly were not, dur- 



236 RICHARD GROKER. 

ing the supremacy of the latter, subject of any viru- 
lence of print. The papers, truly, were not in Kelly's 
day distinguished for an amiable content with either 
that leader or the organization he controlled. But, 
compared with this later day of Croker, they said little 
about them. 

That clemency of the papers — for so, perhaps, would 
the papers phrase it — arose from a paucity of Tammany 
success. There was no threat of Tammany strength; 
wherefore the papers did not feel called to level spear 
against it. The story became changed with the coming 
of Croker. He won immediate triumph and secured 
control of the town. With that the papers awoke; 
they have been baying both Croker and Tammany with 
a rabid unanimity since that time. 

This newspaper violence towards Tammany has 
an easy cause. The local unfashion of Tammany, and 
that deficiency of favor bestowed upon it by the very 
rich, have been explained. And whether one likes the 
thought or no, there be none so quickly supple to the 
moods of Money as the papers. For one, however, I'm 
inclined to defend the press in its right to hold as to 
Tammany, or Money, or whatever may come to be of 
moment in its eyes, what attitude it will. It is free to 
pick and choose its .alliances, to meet its taste or in- 
terest as much as any private individual. 

There is current hubbub as to the " public duty " of 
the papers. Justice will discover no public duty de- 
volving on the press more than bears upon other folk. 
A paper is private property; not public. Your citizen 
buys or declines it at his choice. He reads it or casts 
it aside, believes it or denounces it, as he deems fit. If 
your paper loses money, no public reimburses its pub- 



THE NEWSPAPER DUTY. 237 

lisher. The loss is the latter's, and his alone. Where- 
fore he may open it to this relation, or close it to an- 
other, as freely and by the same right as your merchant 
may his store. There is no question of '' public duty " 
to break into the problem. 

It might be said, as matter pertinent, that the phrase 
" public duty " is one commonly overworked, and found 
more than frequently in the plain employment of fraud. 
Public duty, and its sonorous synonym. Patriotism, 
should be jealously looked to by the listener with their 
each invasion of his ear. " A fool's a patriot in every 
age," says Pope, and the Twickenham hunchback, for 
all his " Dunciad," his peevish quarrels with Gibber, 
Addison, Hervey, Montagu, and the rest, was not al- 
ways wrong. The duty one owes the public may be 
easily lighted upon. It is in black and white, and stares 
one in the face by open word of law. And beyond the 
law there lies no one's duty even by an inference. Does 
one give to the public aught beyond the true and sure 
outreaching of the law? it is so much largesse. 

Not alone does the law set wholly forth one's duty 
to the public, but the latter in its rule-making has left 
nothing to the honor, the honesty, nor the generosity 
of the individual. Before one is born the public be- 
gins to threaten one through printed tons of laws. 
Does one murder? one is to be hanged. Does one 
burn? or steal? or make a mayhem? one is to be im- 
prisoned. Does one owe and not pay? writs of exe- 
cution are to run against one's property, and now and 
then one's person. And so the tale is told. All is 
compulsion; nothing is permitted to the good nature 
nor generous integrity of the citizen. And when such 
is the situation there can be no talk of " duty to the 



238 RICEARD CROKER. 

public " beyond that which the public has preferred by 
clear assertion. 

WTiat belongs to the individual belongs equally to 
the newspaper, and the public duty of the one begins 
and ends with the public duty of the other. In issues 
of politics — where one party is ever found to defend 
Money against the individual, and the other to defend 
the individual against the talons of the Money-harpy, 
— it has been shown by newspaper experience that he 
who, fending for the individual, makes front against 
Money, finds at the year's end no count of profits in his 
till. And of publishers there be few so rich, or fond of 
labors Sisyphean, or weak of a gold-wisdom, as to walk 
daily forth to certain loss. And who is he to blame 
them? 

Therefore comes it that the papers commonly, and al- 
most without exception, are in the ranks against Tam- 
many Hall. And while one is not to condemn them in 
thus carrying their own eggs to auction in their own 
way, one should none the less avoid error yawning in 
discovering the motive which decides them. When 
one, however, considers the gratitude of Money, and the 
ingratitude of men, one must be driven to admit that 
the papers with the worst word preserve more of a 
popular generosity than one might reasonably expect. 

And while one discusses the press one should ever 
remember, when debating what one may question as 
defect, that among the institutions of men the news- 
paper is young. It is yet in the childhood of its days, 
and not arrived at any adult, ripe perfection. In this 
connection of newspapers it is curious to read Ben Jon- 
son's comedy, the " Staple of News." The dramatist, 
three hundred years ago, told the tale of a newspaper 



THE PRESS IS YOUNQ. 239 

that, word for word, is a perfect story of those two 
or three fevered journals of our town which, remem- 
bering that folk prefer amazement to instruction, 
stretch in admiration of the marvelous, and get them- 
selves before the public in perfect Alice-in-Wonderland 
style. 

While the newspaper has been struggling from the 
press for a round trio of centuries, it was not, save for 
the last one hundred and forty years, uncensored and 
free of pen and types. As recently as 1670 that titled 
imbecile Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, — he whom 
Charles the Second characterized when he said: "The 
old fool has taken more executions in that naked coun- 
try than I for the murder of my father," — wrote in a 
report to the home-state, " I thank God there are no 
free schools nor printing; and I hope we shall not have 
these hundred years; for learning has brought diso- 
bedience and heresy and sects into the world, and print- 
ing has divulged them, and libels against the best gov- 
ernment." The earliest Virginia printing press — one 
at Culpeper — arrived in 1681. It was slave to cen- 
sorism until within a decade of our Ee volution. In 
New England, Harvard College set up one of these 
peccant and distrusted engines in 1639. This, too, 
was held in the leash of strict censorship until 1755. 
And as none may find fault with slaves or captives for 
moral or mental deficiencies caused of their bonds, so 
should criticism of the press pause somewhat on the 
fact that it has had no longer than, say, a century and 
a third, wherein to expand and mold itself free of 
argus-eyed and tyrannous obstruction of the law. For 
so brief a growth-space the press shows exceeding well. 

There is one error of management which our news- 



240 RICHARD CROKER. 

papers are prone to make. Those to be guilty thereof 
would find it profitable and working-water on their 
wheels to rectify it. That is the system of paying 
news-writers by space and not by salary. Under the 
present rule, and particularly on papers which fatten 
on sensation, there is inducement to exaggeration as 
well as sheer, invented lie. The more sensational the 
story, the more space will be granted it; and therefore 
and thereby the more money to the pocket of the 
writer. The present space plan is a bid for fiction 
rather than news; and as sensational fiction, when 
told of living men, is wondrous apt to be slanderous fic- 
tion, the ending in a cloud of instances is damages 
against the publishers. True, divers of our imprints — 
precoce and rebelly these, like boys of ten who smoke 
tobacco and blaspheme as do sinners of forty years — 
will scowl denial of this observe. What is written will 
be none the less fact for that. For the profit of their 
reputations, and their purses, too, the papers should 
abandon the " space system " in every comer of their 
comings-out. 

" No man," said Johnson to Boswell — " no man but 
a blockhead ever wrote except for money." And be- 
cause this is rooted verity, and the modern papers in 
taking advantage of it have fairly destroyed the litera- 
ture of our age, they have in that behalf to answer 
serious charges. " Literature," observed some wise- 
acre whose name eludes the pen, " literature is a good 
cane, but a poor crutch." Which in P^nglish means: it 
doesn't pay. As a common rule, writing, whether of 
truth or fiction, poetry or prose, never bought the au- 
thor's crust and cup until the daily papers came to be. 
One glance rearward and one is aware of this. Spenser 



EDMUND SPENSER. 241 

writes his " Faerie Queene," and it is not the public's, 
but Philip Sidney's gold which first gilds his muse. 
Spenser sends in his verses and waits humbly in the 
court to learn the word of Greatness reading. It is 
a kind one. 

"Give him fifty crowns!" cries Sidney at the end 
of the first stanza. 

■ That somber, close official whom he addresses thinks 
Sidney mad. He waits ten minutes. Then he inter- 
rupts to remonstrate. 

" What! " shouts Sidney, " did you not give him the 
fifty crowns? Give him one hundred now; I have 
read another stanza." 

At the end of the third stanza, Sidney orders another 
one hundred crowns to the waiting poet. 

" And send him then away," commands Sidney, " for 
should he remain, and I continue to read, I will con- 
clude bankrupt." 

Swift is upheld by Sir William Temple, and at last 
lives by the Church. Warburton is another who would 
have starved without a pulpit. Gay, for all his 
" Fables," and the shouting success of his " Beggar's 
Opera," is fed by the Queenberrys. Burns turns 
ganger, and finds that bread by the excise which his 
verses would not earn. Hogg is given a farm, or the 
Ettrick Shepherd would have gone wanting flocks and 
fleeces to the close of his Scotch days. Goldsmith 
abides in a garret and has sixty pounds by the " Vicar 
of Wakefield " — a rose of fiction fadeless to this day 
— and is captive for rent in the talons of his landlady 
when Johnson brings it to his emancipation. Johnson, 
himself, sponges on the Thrales for the better part of 
twenty years; and at last quarrels with his benefactress. 



242 RICHARD CROKER. 

for that, becoming a widow, she marries again and so 
breaks up his nest. Chatterton starves to death. Poe 
has thirty dollars for his " Raven," and five dollars a 
stanza for his " Bells." Thirty dollars for the " Eaven " 
might be deemed a just reward for that poem, since 
both verse and thought were thefts. The Eaven in- 
volved was North's raven, as one may see who reads 
" Noctes Ambrosianae "; and as for the verse, one may 
find both style, and march, and now and then the very 
phrase itself, in the " Lady Geraldine's Courtship " of 
Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Coleridge, the tun- 
bellied, leaves wife and children for poor Southey to 
support — it was leeks and lentils, one may promise 
— while he throws himself upon the Gillmans, who for 
sixteen years are willing to feed and lodge a lion for the 
illustrious advertisement of his roarings. The list 
might be made long indeed. There is Hood, dodging 
duns; Lamb, creeping in sad and rusty surtout to his 
India House; our own Hawthorne selling the Mosses of 
his Manse for those peas and pulse which were their 
returns. Thoreau lives on a dime a week at Walden 
and makes it the reason of a classic. Also he sells 
hardly two hundred volumes of his work, which does 
not pay the one-fifth cost of printing. 

But while to starve or beg or sell one's self for pam- 
phlets to the politicians was the fate of writers for the 
past three centuries and more, still the system bred a 
literature; which is more than goes on now. Our man- 
ners may be finer, but the grace has left our pens. In 
the day of that ruffed and pearl-sown dragoness Eliza- 
beth, when folk fed savagely with their fingers, and 
forks were a curious weakness of Italy, still a Sidney, a 
Lyly, a Shakspere, a Jonson, a Beaumont, and a Donne 



THE EIOHTEENTH CENTURY. 243 

were in bloom. And behold the names that cluster 
about the morning of the eighteenth century. Dryden 
has just died, and his funeral, interrupted by drunkards 
in its beginning, is after a fortnight made consummate 
at Westminster, But Dryden leaves Pope and Swift, 
and Gay and Garth, and Steele and Warburton, and 
Bolingbroke and Mallet, and Addison and Defoe, and 
multitudes behind. Defoe, spy, prisoner, wolf of poli- 
tics, and what not, is still the grand-master of them all. 
His books, generally on autobiographical lines, are 
examples later for such as Smollett, and Fielding, and 
one had almost said Sterne; while his essay-editorials 
taught Addison and Steele their trades and made them 
models for their ''Tatlers" and "Spectators." One even 
finds the paunchy old Defoe, in inter\^als of " Eobin- 
son Crusoe," struggling with the servant-girl problem 
in quite a modern way, and indignantly denouncing 
those labor unions which taught his kitchen hussies 
tilt-nosed airs and higher wages two hundred years ago. 
Consider the year eighteen hundred. Consider the 
names that gather about the Ediiiburgli Review and 
Constable's, and BlacJcwood's, and the Quarterly maga- 
zines. Take the one hundred years to follow 1750, 
and what names look down on one! Johnson, 
Goldsmith, Sheridan, Eichardson, Burney with her 
lisping daintyisms of " Evelina " and "• Cecilia "; Bos- 
well, Charles and Mary Lamb, Byron, Scott, Blackwood, 
Hogg, Burns, Croker, Jeffreys, Wilson (Christopher 
North), Lockhart, Gifford, Southey, Shelley, Coleridge, 
Wordsworth, Moore, Lever, Campbell, De Quincey, 
Hazlitt, Lytton, Disraeli, Tennyson, Dickens, Thack- 
eray, Hunt, Cornwall, Jerrold, Carlyle; and, of our own 
side, Cooper, Irving, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Lowell, 



244 RICHARD CROKER. 

Thoreau, Emerson, Parton, Poe, and him best of all, 
old Whittier. Where are the names now to march with 
those of one hundred years ago? Or where such a 
rendezvous as Murray's parlors in Albemarle Street — 
where one might have found of an afternoon Scott 
meeting Byron, and every literary notable besides from 
Channing to De Stael? 

Where is one to seek such names to-day? Who is 
there of our own times, the heart of whose labors is 
still to beat one hundred years away? Stevenson, 
some of Kipling's, and two or three of Conan Doyle's, 
perhaps. And yet there are as good folk writing now 
as ever wrote. The world is as rife of Scotts and 
Byrons and others of as spry a genius for phrase or 
sense or sentiment as in that age Augustan — that 
golden age a century gone by. 

But they toil on the daily papers. 

They are offered stipends which no aforetime author 
— with now and then an exception — ever had, and are 
paid more for a week than poor Goldsmith might earn 
in a sixmonth. The papers pay best; and present 
cakes and ale are preferable to fame. The possible 
literature of the age is bribed out of existence, and all 
our Lambs and our Lyttons, our Grotes and our 
Gibbons, our Coleridges and our Carlyles, are grind- 
ing at " editorial " or " news stories " the mortal lives 
whereof are not to exceed the day. They are to come 
up as a flower and be cut dowTi with each day's edition 
of the paper. Yes, forsooth! our dailies are to answer 
for a dead literature. 

, One may argue that were those about who might 
fequal the masters and great captains of a literary past, 
one would hear from them; and that despite any wet- 



OMitiS Is SELt'-^LINl). 245 

blanketing of good pay on the part of the daily papers. 
The trouble lies here: your genius who should do these 
deeds is never made aware of himself. He has no time; 
and with his fat week's pay in his Saturday's purse 
from the papers, he lacks the reason to make his own 
discovery. Genius has no self-knowledge. The " mute 
inglorious Milton " is as ignorantly unaware that he 
is an untapped geyser of poesy as are his neighbors; 
the " Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood " never 
knows that he is a quiescent volcano of revolution; both 
go graveward unidentified by others and unknown of 
themselves. 

Even when the fact of genius has demonstration its 
possessor is the last to learn and the first to doubt its 
existence. Scott could not believe in his own great- 
ness; and Thackeray, in spite of " Pendennis " and 
" Vanity Fair," was quietly convinced of himself as a 
fellow of dull, undiligent weakness to the last closing 
of his eyes. It's the same in other trades. Clara 
Morris, the genius of the Emotional, is first a ballet 
girl and acts only by accident; while Mrs. Gilbert, un- 
surpassed of any stage-age as an " Old Woman," does 
not speak a line until the frosts and wrinkles of oncom- 
ing years drive her from those jigs and clog-dancings 
wherewith she lives. The Scotch seers could not 
foretell their own fortunes, for they could never " see '* 
themselves. It is the same with genius. Even Dis- 
raeli's famous threat, when Parliament hooted the 
failure of his maiden speech, " They shall yet listen 
to me! " was rather the retort of anger, and of vanity 
with a wound, than the uttered calm prophecy of 
genius weighing itself. The great dailies, like a weevil, 
have eaten the germ and destroyed the seed of our 



246 RICHARD CROKER. 

literature; they have that charge to reply to and be 
convicted of, whether they are to suffer for it or no. 
The deliquium of our literature is the editorial of the 
daily paper. 

And while we be about a literature dead and 
buried in the dailies, there is another subject near 
one's soul. As a taste-disgrace of the times, one is 
made ever to see — I had almost said to read — through 
the mediation of our dailies (though sometimes it's 
our magazines), a procession of uncurried and clumsily 
considered articles and essays on every and any topic, 
made by folk who, wanting a literary ability beyond 
what might encompass the production of a postal card, 
have no better license for their poor writing than that 
they are ex-Presidents, or ex-Speakers, or ex-Candi- 
dates, or present Senators, or some such urgent com- 
modity. Why should he regard himself equal to litera- 
ture, the most difficult of the trades, merely for that 
through some fortuitous conjunction of geography, 
politics, and luck he once was execrable as a President, 
or disastrous as a Speaker, or defeated as a Candidate, 
or is presently imperfect as a nation's Senator? Is any 
of these a reason why he should rival Macaulay, or lift 
a leaf from Hume? 

And these difficult ones as they hideously confect 
their bad English, or wax pompous with some thread- 
bare phrase, should reflect on the cause of their em- 
ployment, and, in the name of what we'll call their self- 
respect, eschew it and put it aside. Do not they under- 
stand that what they do could not last for one moment 
by its own merit, whether of thought, substance, or 
style? Do not they know that they and their lucubra- 
tions are designed for the curiosity of the reader, and 



DEFEAT THE PEN-OOTHS. 247 

not his taste nor intelligence? The anxiety that col- 
lects them collects also the Bearded Lady, the Fat 
Woman, the What-is-It, and the Waltzing Bear. 

And such being the event, why are they so foolish as 
to confine their splendors to literature? Why not 
pierce the drama with their gleaming presence? There, 
indeed, should be the true, rich theater of their gifts' 
display. Prize fighters have had a stage success; why 
not the politicians? Prithee! put their scribblings 
away and have them this better platform! Let the ex- 
President be " Sir John Brute "; the ex-Speaker, " Fal- 
staff "; the ex-Candidate, " Jack Cade "; while our 
young and burning Senator — who has photographs with 
hair pawed over eyes, face wearing looks of stern 
yet haggard introspection, and as it were, a He-sibyl in 
the fury of prophecy — might surely find some character 
in the ample range between " Eomeo " and Etheridge's 
" Sir Fopling Flutter " to which his banyan genius 
might let down a root to its green and profitable nour- 
ishment. The daily papers may be defended, perhaps, 
in their destruction of a literature on the plea that 
they need the literati in their destinies. But there can 
be no excuse for an employment of these ex-Some- 
things, who, with no reason for scribbling save an un- 
fortunate notoriety, would be as well and, probably, as 
congenially engaged were they perched on drygoods 
boxes in some deserving side-show and cold their photo- 
graphs. At least this last would protect literature 
from the pen-forays of these barbarians, which would 
be completely a solution of present fears in that behalf. 

Thoreau had his views on newspapers, and writes in 
" Walden " thus peevishly: "And I am sure that I never 
read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read 



248 RICHARD CROKER. 

of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, 
or one house burned, or one vessel wrecked, or one 
steamboat blown up, or one cow run over on the rail- 
road, or one mad dog killed, or one lot of grasshoppers 
in the winter — we never need read of another. One is 
enough. If you are acquainted with the principle, 
what do you care for a million instances and applica- 
tions? To a philosopher all 'news,' as it is called, is 
gossip; and they who edit and read it are old women 
over their tea. Yet not a few are greedy after this 
gossip. There was a rush I hear the other day to learn 
the foreign news by the last arrival, . . . news which I 
seriously think a ready wit might write a twelvemonth 
or twelve years beforehand. As for Spain, for instance, 
if you know how to throw in Don Carlos, and the In- 
fanta, and Don Pedro, and Seville, and Granada at the 
right time, and in the right proportions, and serve up 
a bullfight when other entertainments fail, it will be 
true to the letter. . . And as for England, the last sig- 
nificant scrap of news from that quarter was the revolu- 
tion of 1649." 

While one is willing to stand between the press and 
the critics on an indictment of sensationalism, or for 
an aid and comfort rendered Money on its march of 
commercial aggression, there is that other charge of 
snobbery for which, in the case of more than one paper, 
it well deserves the whipping-post, the pillory, and the 
stocks. It is one thing to defend Money, for it has 
its rights and should have its day like any other dog. 
But to fulsomely flatter Money and bow adoringly be- 
fore it is decidedly another goods. And there's a 
present as well as a future serious harm to lurk in such 
slavish incense. Money has a weak mind; its head may 



PRESS SNOBBERY. 249 

be turned; and parasitism is as much a deliriant as 
opium. 

Yet sundry of our dailies keep it up — one wonders 
why. Every rich man becomes and is the patron before 
whom these Jenkinses of print forever bow and bend. 
It is these snobs of the press who are rapidly construct- 
ing of the word " millionaire " a title of American no- 
bility. In their eyes and columns, a man of wealth is 
all-important in his citizenship. A poor man may be 
wise and brave and true; he may live respected and die 
defending the flag. Yet he will gain neither the space, 
position, nor illustration, in these dailies that went re- 
cently to one of our junior millionaires for a no-greater 
public service than running over a bicycle. 

It is all snobbery. And it is pernicious, and deplor- 
ably un-American. These imprints will pat poverty on 
the back; descant feelingly on the heroism of labor. 
They will call Money every hard and churlish name. 
They invent the epithets " masses " and " classes," and 
assume to champion the first against the last. Despite 
all this, however, they omit not to sedulously fawn 
about the knees of Wealth. They find their fellow 
in the old-time parasite of Greece; discover their voca- 
tion in abject adulation of the very rich. Anybody, 
everybody, who has attained the mark of the million, is 
the subject of never-sleeping solicitude to these jour- 
nals. He may not so much as sneeze but " artists " and 
" reporters," not to mention an occasional " commis- 
sioner," are dispatched to picture and report the sacred 
ceremony. ,It's this that promotes Money, disrates 
Manhood, and makes it possible for Wealth by merest 
political interference to set a goose to guarding Kome 
and give a toga to a fool. 



250 RICHARD CROKER. 

John Kelly died June 1, 1886, at the age of sixty-five. 
And there has been and will be none to better deserve 
the hearts of Tammany Hall. Were he to want an 
epitaph, it might be graven: His Faults were the Faults 
of Honesty: he was more an American than a Politi- 
cian, more a Man than an American. 




Arthur Pue Gorman. 



XV. 

AN EX-PRESIDENT. 

This is a lecturer so skilled in policy 
That (no disparagement to Satan's cunning) 
He well might read a lesson to the devU, 
And teach the old seducer new temptations. 

—Old Play. 

"Why doesn't Kichard Croker hold office? " While 
one may not answer as to the reason, one may reply 
decisively as to the fact. The future will never find 
him an officeholder. Nor may one blame him. There is 
little honor and still less of ease in officeholding. And 
as for the profit? why, one might better hold a baby or 
a horse. Most folk may reap more by merely holding 
their tongues; albeit, there be a-many of us to never 
grow rich that gait. Croker will never again hold office. 

It is his word for it. Croker touched on the busi- 
ness tersely, yet with a clear vigor, one day at dinner. 
He was carving a fowl at the time; and with a blade of 
blunt unservice made but wretched work of it. It was 
conflict rather than carving, and reminded one of noth- 
ing so much as St. George and the Dragon. In the 
conversation of the four or five at table, the suggestion 
was made that, upon certain possible contingencies, 
Croker should be chosen a Senator of the United States. 
Croker looked keenly up. 

" While I live I'll never hold another office," he said; 
" and so you may tell any who is interested, however 
and whenever and wherever the question comes up." 
851 



252 RICHARD CROKER. 

Eichard Croker has filled office. AVliich possibly 
may be that weaning reason why he has no now ambi- 
tions of that kind. Croker was an alderman in 1870; 
and being inimical to Tweed was legislated by that un- 
worthy into private life. He was afterwards marshal 
to collect arrears of taxes, and put previous records to 
the blush by gathering in a half-million of dollars de- 
linquent in four months. For this good work Croker 
was publicly complimented by Havemeyer, then mayor. 
In 1873 Croker was elected coroner, an office of moment 
and importance. Later he was again chosen alderman 
and resigned to become fire commissioner. Croker's 
last office was in 1879, when he took oath as chamber- 
lain of the city, a place of highest repute and dignity. 
Already, however, was Croker growing to his present 
temper of non-officeholding, and he resigned his trust 
as chamberlain Avithin the year. This was his last 
place. 

Following Kelly's death, Eichard Croker was called 
to be the chief of Tammany Hall. He did not seek 
this elevation, and strove against it. John Scannell it 
was who, in the face of Croker's protest, made a cam- 
paign among the " leaders " and wrought out the se- 
lection of Croker. 

Before that day of Kelly's demise, a dozen prior 
years indeed, a blow, shrewdly villainous, was aimed at 
Eichard Croker. It was in 1874. Croker, thirty-one 
years of age, was serving his term as coroner. His 
office, however, is aside from the mark and has no part 
of the story. 

It was Croker most of all who had brought Kelly to 
the leadership of Tammany. And of those about him, 
Kelly relied weightily on Croker and trusted to him. 



KELLY'S BEST MAN. 253 

Croker was cool and wise and of a good craft in council; 
thorough and clean as an executive. Kelly could have 
found none better to be his supplement. Your natural 
soldier has the same power to obey as to command; and 
Croker was your natural soldier. Thus it came — dis- 
cussion ended and consideration of conditions closed, — 
that, when commands were issued, Croker took the 
field, swift, exact, and utter in their carrying out. 
For which virtues of execution Croker stood highest in 
Kelly's thoughts, as he would in those of Napoleon, had 
he been with him in his day. Croker, for his proper 
gifts of courage, silence, and a quick, military decisive- 
ness, was the war-marshal of Tammany Hall. While 
Kelly ruled in council, Croker commanded in the field; 
it was as if, Tammany being the country, the one was 
Lincoln while the last was Grant. 

It was on election day, the 3d of November, 1874; 
Hewitt was the Tammany-Kelly candidate for Con- 
gress. Against Hewitt ran one O'Brien, the idol of the 
mob, and more remembered for violence and lack of 
conscience than for virtues useful to the state. The 
O'Brien element were by no means an untested quan- 
tity in the practical labor of elections. They were 
famous as repeaters and plug-uglies; and if the ballot 
offended them, capable of throwing the boxes into the 
river; and if the judges offended them, of making those 
dignitaries follow the boxes before jettisoned. 'Alto- 
gether the O'Brien contingent were a highly lively 
tribe, whose overpowering passion for victory oft 
carried them to extremes. 

Thus it befell, during the Congressional contest of 
Hewitt against O'Brien, that the latter's adherents, 
moved and instigated of Satan and to that King- 



254 mCHARD CROKER. 

demon's infinite relish and delight, went from poll 
to poll like unto roaring lions, assaulting, threatening, 
and terrorizing the Hewitt workers and driving that 
candidate's votes into the wilderness. This must be 
recovered; or right would be defeated and crime 
succeed. 

Eichard Croker was asked by Kelly to take charge of 
the situation. Croker at once proceeded to the 
scenes of violence, and at a polling place where wrong 
was rampant and right was cowed, came upon the 
dread O'Brien himself. This personage was heavily 
accompanied of his warriors, some glisk of whom may 
be gained from the fact that the least desperately puis- 
sant among them was known as " Strong- Arm Mike." 
Croker had with him a trio of quiet, yet resolute, fol- 
lowers; he with these was confronted by O'Brien and 
a furious score. 

Brief was the parley. Croker never yet counted an 
enemy until after the fray. He was ready and fear- 
less. " You must send these thieves out of the dis- 
trict," observed Croker to O'Brien; "' they don't live 
here and have no right here. These scoundrels must 
get out." The " thieves " and " scoundrels " adverted 
to included and were of the worthy class with Strong- 
Arm Mike. Since the retreat thus ordered of the 
thieves there present meant, if consented to. the 
election of Hewitt and defeat of O'Brien, that 
latter volatile person made no more ado, but struck 
at Croker. This was bad judgment on O'Brien's 
reckless part; a fact that broke over him like 
a tempest when Croker instantly retorted in muscular 
kind. There was an altercation wherein O'Brien lost 
blood nnd reputation with his followers, who had held 



THE KILLING OF MCKENNA. 255 

him to be invincible and found that he was not. Dur- 
ing the melee, which waxed general, pistols were pro- 
duced and a dozen shots were fired. None, however, 
by Eichard Croker, who never owned nor carried 
weapon. 

At the close of hostilities, which last was brought 
about by police, who interfered when O'Brien was being 
worsted, it was discovered that one McKenna lay on 
the ground, bullet-slain. In a trice it occurred to those 
most criminal of the O'Brien faction — all late minions 
of the Tweed Eing — that here was an opening to be 
both revenged and rid of their arch-enemy Eichard 
Croker at one swoop. They would charge him with the 
killing of McKenna; a little diligent perjury would do 
the rest. 

Thus was it determined. And because O'Brien was 
not without a malignant potency in certain places, 
which for a decency of justice should have been beyond 
his touch of thumb, Eichard Croker was indicted and 
brought to trial for the McKenna taking-off. It could 
not be accoimted a vast peril. Three years earlier in a 
black heyday of Tweed one might have told another 
story. As it was, the truth shone through the 
rickety perjury of the prosecution like sunlight through 
a lattice; and while the jury disagreed, for two 
there were of the panel who, being part of the con- 
spiracy, stood with bad stubbornness for conviction, 
the indictment was instantly dismissed on motion of 
the State's attorney himself. It made no bottomless 
difference. The decision arrived at by the public in the 
beginning was that Eichard Croker was innocent, and 
neither the trial nor its termination served other pur- 
pose than the confirmation of this view. 



256 mCBARD CROMm. 

There was one lurid, distrustful element of this trial 
which wins comment to this day. That was the position 
of the judge who presided, and his charge to the jury. 
One will hear from time to time, as echoes of litigation 
grinding reach one's ears, of charges "* favorable " and 
charges " unfavorable " to defendants. These ad- 
jectives, descriptive of an ermined attitude, are of am- 
biguity and may mean much or little, as the case may 
be. On this Croker occasion the charge was " unfavor- 
able," and with such a fervor of unfavor, too, that it 
staggered all who listened, and was like nothing so 
much as the bench-efforts of a Scroggs or a Jeffreys in 
his most untrammeled day. But truth is mighty; right 
prevailed and wrong fell back, and Croker came forth 
from the furnace of that trial without the smell of fire 
about his garments. 

It is curious to note that he who presided with such 
bias at this trial of Croker is still judge; holding 
now by grace and selection of Croker himself. And 
this goes in demonstration of Croker's profound 
self-control, and displays how completely he declines 
the voice of private feeling when passing on questions 
of party expediency or policy. Years later — for these 
jurists have terms of fourteen years — the lease of office 
of this judge ran out. Croker, free and powerful, was 
the Attila of party — the leader of a victorious Tam- 
many. The judge in danger came not near Croker; he 
craved no favors and looked only for defeat. Nor did 
Croker seek the judge; dumb as the other, he also made 
no sign. None of those near Croker's elbow in the dis- 
cussions of Tammany said aught of a renomination for 
this judge, whose term was waning to a close. Folk 
political were aware of Croker's little reason for pre- 



ABRAM S. HEWITT. 257 

ferring the retention of this judge, and looked for the 
latter's letting out. The time arrived; and when Croker 
turned in the list to his executive committee, embody- 
ing his thoughts of a ticket, it had the name of that 
judge at the top. It was wisdom and the heart of policy. 
And it was peculiarly the earmark of that cautious 
sagacity without which Croker's autocracy of sixteen 
years would have been impossible. Your common 
leader would have smote that jurist hip and thigh, 
and made a boast thereof, and a feast upon it. But 
Croker is the man uncommon. Silent, wordless, want- 
ing hint or suggestion, Croker renamed and re-elected 
him. 

Hewitt was sent to Congress in that struggle, and 
O'Brien was given to defeat. One of the papers, writ- 
ing of a meeting following the election, said: " Hewitt 
was the next speaker. He spoke in strong terms of the 
recent election outrage. He said that the man 
O'Brien, who had nominated himself as his opponent, 
had boasted that he would be returned by a majority of 
ten thousand, and he felt assured that if murder 
would have served his opponent's purpose it would 
have been done. It was the last thought of his 
mind that such a contest would have been forced 
upon him. Hewitt, having stated that he had given 
word to the police of an apprehended attack upon 
his political supporters, and that the police failed to 
appeaj- and discharge their duty, said, much as he 
regretted the unhappy occurrence that took place on 
election day, he believed that if it had not occurred, 
O'Brien would have been returned in place of himself, 
and there would have been thus returned to the 
National Council the representative of the mob. He, 



258 RICHARD CROKER. 

Hewitt, took some pains to get at the facts in this case, 
and from disinterested witnesses he was able to say- 
that it would be shown [the trial was not yet had] that 
the attack on that occasion was made by O'Brien and 
not by Coroner Croker. Coroner Croker had no pistol 
and never drew one. Hewitt said that he knew Croker 
drew no pistol, and that when pistols were drawn they 
were drawn by the opposite side. He did not under- 
estimate the difficulty of the contest. He went into no 
grog shops and treated no crowds of hired ruffians. He 
used no money to buy votes, but what he did was to 
protect the honest voter in his right to deposit his bal- 
lot, whether it was for or against him. Croker was not 
an aggressor. What he did was done with a view to 
protect the ballot box. Hewitt said that the evidence 
on this point was overwhelming, and lie believed that, 
but for the firmness and courage of Richard Croker, 
O'Brien would have got the certificate of election." 

Another memorable event of the days of Kelly, and 
one wherein Richard Croker had a prime suggesting 
portion, was the discovery and elevation of Grover 
Cleveland, first to be Governor and -next to be Presi- 
dent of the United States. Cleveland had made some 
noise as the " veto mayor " of Buffalo. Croker spoke 
of Cleveland — while in preliminary and privy council 
— to Kelly as a possible good candidate for the post of 
Governor. The thought engaged Kelly; and in the 
end, and by the convention votes of Tammany Hall, 
Cleveland was named. 

It is in my mind to give here some charcoal sketch- 
ings of this heavy late President. My knowledge of 
him is sure and to the color. And Cleveland's portrait 
is properly parcel of Croker's career, for, more than any 



QBOVER CLEVELAND. 250 

other, it was Croker's hand to plant the stalk of him. 
Had there been no Croker there would have been no 
Cleveland, in a national sense at least; and while that 
fact may not be looked on as to the Croker credit, its 
relation is none the less in line. This is the life story, 
in compress, of Grover Cleveland. 

There has been ever error in recounts of Cleveland. 
They were either weak with the flattery of some ful- 
some place-yearning Mugwump, or wrong as the assault 
of a foe who attacked by any method. What follows 
will be the thrice-pruned truth. It will be born, too, 
in that spirit of white indifference which should 
characterize precise history. 

It is pity that the whole American public can't go to 
Washington and remain three months in twelve. It 
would be worth the nation's while to give every man a 
point-blank look at Government, and the watchmen on 
the walls thereof. One may take the commonest clod; 
let it be vicious as vile; low in its instincts, black in its 
past. And does one elect it, for example, to a Presi- 
dency, its apotheosis begins. Its halo comes with its 
inauguration oath; and ever thereafter that clod to the 
general eye will seem, not the clay it is, but the precious 
gold it ought to be. For all of which weakness of pub- 
lic sight and judgment, a weakness to grow with popu- 
lation, it is profitable to sit coldly down and read 
about one's rulers. 

Cleveland, a Jerseyman, was born in March, 1837. 
He was forty-eight when first he came as President to 
Washington. Cleveland represented in his successes 
the victory of accident. He had what groping folk 
feeling for answer in the dark, call " luck." Like 
Napoleon, Cleveland named it " destiny." Let that go. 



260 RICHARD CROKER. 

It's not of moment what one calls it, so that it be 
understood. 

Cleveland as a youth was taught little of book sort. 
Coming from school he could not name you twenty au- 
thors; had not read a dozen books; didn't know Robin 
Hood from Thomas, poet of that style, and wotted 
little of polite letters. At seventeen, after performing 
briefly, his biographer says, as " teacher " in a blind 
asylum — and he might have taught the blind — Cleve- 
land went to Buffalo. This was in 1855. By the good- 
ness of an uncle he lived and studied law. He was ad- 
mitted in 1859. Later he held a slight office for three 
years, and was defeated in his strivings to reach 
another. 

By one sign one may know that Cleveland was not a 
learned sage of law. He became sheriff of Erie County 
in 1879. No lawyer of high blood will consent to tliis 
place. There are other and more professional channels 
of ambition. He will be the public's attorney, or 
judge; but, mark you! never sheriff. That office, with 
its hangman's work, its processes, its evictions, its 
levies and distraints, goes to another class. 

And yet even this law ignorance shows its fortunate 
side in the climbing case of Cleveland. He became 
sheriff and kept the jail; and next, having, one rnay 
assume, made an excellent record, losing none of his 
keys nor his captives, he is seized on, made Mayor, and 
instead of the county cells keeps the City Hall. 

It was John Kelly with Croker who made Cleveland 
Governor. It was a war: Tammany against anti-Tam- 
many; city against country. " Let's take this fellow 
from Buffalo, who's been Mayor there," said Kelly. 
" Let's nominate him for Governor. He doesn't be- 



TAMMANT NAMES CLEVELAND. 261 

long to either side." The Convention did as Kelly 
said; and then Conkling fought Garfield, and almost the 
Kepublican party stayed at home on election day, and 
Cleveland won over Folger by a shadow short of two 
hundred thousand. 

Following Cleveland's Governorship, he was selected 
for the Presidential race. Gorman as manager elected 
him, landing him winner by a throat-latch, and was 
barred from the White House for it within a month 
after the inauguration. 

Thus one beholds the lifting up of Cleveland from 
sheriff to President. This story is much quoted by 
some as proof of the sterling worth of America's free 
institutions. With the thoughtful, however, its mid- 
day value in that behalf is denied. 

Jones of Nevada once told that of all whom he had 
met in high places Cleveland was mentally the most 
abundantly dark. When he came to be President, he 
had not read the Constitution of the country. Still, 
one is at liberty to select one's authors as well as one's 
literature; we may not, perhaps, complain. 

There were two matters appurtenant of the White 
House of which Cleveland had heard; two powers to 
which he willingly turned. These were the veto and 
the patronage. Within a year from March 4, 1885, his 
first inaugural, Cleveland vetoed more measures than 
had all the Presidents who preceded him. What a study 
in egotism is this! What a misconception of duty! 
Washington, the scholarly Jefferson, men who rocked 
the cradle of the Constitution; the virile Jackson, 
whom neither man nor god might bind; Lincoln, with 
all his care; and the silent Grant, who lived in war's 
red front, while Cleveland's haunt was safety — the veto 



262 BICHARD CROKER. 

example of these was no guide to him. They fought 
and founded, and fought again and re-founded the Gov- 
ernment. They alternated pen with sword, gave wis- 
dom and valor both to the upbringing and defense of 
the country. Cleveland had done nothing. Yet in one 
year, playing with this tremendous power of veto like 
a child with a toy, he dealt death to more measures 
than had all those heroes in the hundred years which 
went before. 

To understand Cleveland as a President — for he 
changed mightily, and those who knew him a dozen 
years before wouldn't have known him then — one must 
remember the influence of money-getting upon him. 
He was poor, without a dollar, when first he came 
White-House seeking. When he left in 1897 he was 
rich to the point of millions. And Money had re-shaped, 
and molded, and added to, and taken from, and made 
him anew. Cleveland had not made a dollar; natu- 
rally, he didn't know how. It was like calling on a 
horse to make a dollar. He had grown to forty-eight, 
and came to Washington without so much silver as 
might serve to keep the fiends from dancing in his 
pocket. But he met wise men; men who saw in him 
those latent money-wonders which lie dormant in every 
President, and who were willing to work them out to 
his and their advantage. Probably that tribe saw afore- 
time the money-chances which slept in other Presidents. 
But as one after another, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, 
Jackson, down to one's own time, they left the 
White House, some abject paupers, all leaner than they 
came, it would seem that those others lacked that thrift 
to permit their development. It was not until Cleve- 
land's day that the White House became lucrative; and 



MONET WAS KING. 263 

he retired — he who was dollarless at forty-eight — with 
the record of being the first President who went forth 
richer than he arrived. Coming poor, he departed with 
the wealth of dreams. And to the quiet of his con- 
science, it is to be doubted if he could have told one 
word of how that glittering, pleasing marvel came 
about. He had millions; and he didn't know how. 
Yet the riddle was not difficult. As President he 
held that lamp of magic which one had only to rub, to 
make all about him rich. 

It skills nothing to go over the long and tangled 
trail of Cleveland's money-getting, with all its windings, 
twists, and curious turns. And whether, in the heap- 
ing and sweeping together, it came from Bed Top or 
Gray Gables; from bonds or stock deals or traction com- 
panies; or woodpulp patents; or Nova Scotia coal; or 
Cuban iron; or whatever its thousand sources, it was 
an enormous sum for one to have from a capital of 
money-ignorance and nothing in twelve years; and it 
failed not to impress Cleveland and affect him. In his 
last reign his great reverence was for money; his respect 
was kept for those who possessed it. Poverty was 
synonymous with ignorance; wisdom went only with 
wealth. In his day one might come afoot to Washing- 
ton; and if one did, one couldn't see him. Come in a 
private car, and one could. One's honesty, one's worth, 
the goodness of one's purpose, or the justice of one's 
cause would not avail! People were nothing to Cleve- 
land; property was everything. He would turn from a 
man in a moment. Spill down a million of gold, and 
the sight would suspend and hold him spellbound — cast 
him into a trance of riches. 

Cleveland was not book-learned; neither had he been 



264 RICHARD CROKER. 

taught of travel. He knew nothing west of Buffalo, 
nor south of the North Pennsylvania line. He had, 
most of all, no imagination. He had heard of a West, 
he had heard of a South; but the terms told no tales to 
Cleveland. What the West and South were; their 
wants, their rights, their aims, their strengths, loomed 
but vaguely, lost in that mighty fog of no imagination 
and what he didn't know. Cleveland's was a small 
mind, but hard as jadestone and retentive. After its 
manner it had a narrow strength, and while he learned 
slowly he remembered; not always, however, with profit. 
He had no mental finenesses; no taste for art nor music. 
He knew no pleasant difference between a Murillo and 
a three-sheet poster. He would have had no prefer- 
ence for one of Schubert's serenades over " The 
Arkansaw Traveler." He would rather talk than read, 
eat than talk, fish than eat, drink than fish. 

Cleveland was a creature of impulse rather than of 
thought-born decision. Would one teach him any- 
thing, one must teach him through the eye. What he 
saw he knew; what he heard — unless it were to some- 
one's disadvantage — made slight impression. Cleve- 
land turned credulous, ready ear to slander. When he 
was President the commonest blackleg of party, one 
whose plaudit could not aid one, might tear down good 
repute with a word. Nor might the affirmations of 
honest men stand against the malice and mendacity 
of that one blackleg. 

Flattery was the most potent lever in the case of 
Cleveland. Those thrived best who flattered best. He 
was amenable to the tickle of the sycophant as ever 
was swine to cob. One might have stuck bills on him 
so it were done with "soft soap." As a result, those who 



THE SYCOPHANTS HEYDAY. 265 

stood close to Cleveland were either cnnning or servile. 
They chanted his praises; and they never contradicted 
nor bid him pause. Some were crafty and fawned upon 
him to use him to their ends. Others were mere crin- 
gers. But honest natures, strong, open, frank men 
who would tell to him the truth, were soon brought 
to stay away. He wanted none such near him. 

Cleveland delighted in the little, and would labor 
pantingly at the windlass of small things. It was this 
bent of the infinitesimal that led him to put in hours 
darkly arranging a reason to shatter some old woman's 
pension with the bludgeon of his veto. 

Cleveland was by nature a Tory. He had no innate 
conception of republicanism; no knowledge, native or 
acquired, of the school to which free America belongs. 
Had he lived in that furnace hour of Bunker Hill, his 
substitute would have worn a red coat, and fought at 
the foot of that renowned eminence against Warren 
and the others at the top. His trend was monarchical. 
Three times witliin three years he aligned himself with 
a throne; in Samoa, Hawaii, and last in Brazil. He 
succeeded in Samoa; and this country, with England 
and Germany, upheld a king in those far islands. He 
failed in Hawaii with his clumsy king-making, and pub- 
lic opinion frightened him away from " Queen Lil." 
Mendonca scared him backward with a laugh and a 
sneer in the case of Brazil. His ever-Toryism was at 
the brakes! With Cuba bleeding at our gate, with a 
people and a Congress demanding her relief, Cleveland 
to the last refused. 

Men called Cleveland ungrateful. Those who helped 
him most were most roundly rebuffed. The flatterer, 
the sycophant, the boneless Mugwump waxed rich by 



266 RICHARD CROKER. 

his favor; the friend who built him went without re- 
ward; the laborer of party without his hire. 

To egotism and a coarse greed Cleveland added the 
heart of a hare. None was more flightily timid in a 
physical way. Perhaps it was this that kept him from 
the war when the nation fought for its life in the six- 
ties, and Cleveland, aged twenty-three, in perfect 
health without wife to weep or wean to stay him, took 
heed he didn't go. What a Curtius! How Rome 
would have reared a column to him! When Cleveland 
aforetime left Washington for Buzzard's Bay or 
" ducks," he skulked secretly from town. His coming 
back, as to its date, was earnestly covered from a 
world's knowledge. When once he returned from Buz- 
zard's Bay, I chanced to be at the station. The rabble, 
whereof I was a unit, knew nothing of Cleveland's com- 
ing. The train drew up. Cleveland descended and ap- 
proached the gate. There were only a few to be 
pleased and to cheer. As he came near, twenty Secret 
Service spies, there for that brave work, stepped from 
their listening, peeping places among the feared and 
common herd, and cordoned that President and " pro- 
tected him " to his carriage. It was a pride-flattering 
pageant! 

During the last three years of Cleveland a ring 
of sentry boxes rose up about the White House. 
The Presidential police force was recruited to twenty- 
six men. Each night a trio of those guardsmen pervaded 
the White House corridors. More were in the grounds. 
Then the President could sleep. It cost eighty dollars 
a day, which made it high-priced slumber. When 
Cleveland would ride, an armed, booted, spurred de- 
tective, with a foolish revolver on his foolish hip, 



MEASURELESS EGOTISM. 267 

swung to his foolish saddle and clattered foolishly 
behind. 

In the luxuriance of a measureless egotism, Cleve- 
land was wont to hold that he elected the party. His 
courtiers, as they fanned and fawned and flattered, 
assured him of this, and he believed them. Every de- 
feat the Democracy suffered after 1892 served as proof 
to him. It warmed him with mild pleasure as he saw 
reflected in the hopeless returns his popularity. " See 
what happens when I'm not running! " he argued, and 
drew a glow from party defeat like an inspiration. It 
was this that taught him that the patronage was his 
and not the party's. And he used it to please himself; 
to push his way with Congress, and as jewels wherewith 
to deck his flatterers and spaniels of politics. 

One offshoot of this egotism, partly bom of timidity, 
was Cleveland's secrecy. While President, he locked 
every door, turned down every light, gagged every 
mouth, hid everything he might. There are but two 
keys to go with government; one is to the Treasury, 
the other to the Jail. But Cleveland's whole thought 
was for chains and padlocks. He hated questions, he 
hated newspapers, he hated lights. 

Cleveland held that a President was a guardian. 
Bayard was mirror to Cleveland when he said that the 
American people were a turbulent and unruly brood, 
and required " a strong ruler " like Cleveland to keep 
them in check. Mark the word " ruler." That was 
the Cleveland idea. A President " rules " the country; 
the people are his subjects. That was the song his 
courtiers sang. 

In his egotism, Cleveland, given a White House, 
played the tyrant. He frowned down suggestion. 



268 RICHARD CROKER. 

and he ignored the people. He would turn Congress- 
men from his door until they wearied of coming. No 
claim was strong enough to gain entrance to him 
against his whim. Within three days after the repeal 
of the Sherman law, wherein Voorhees and Mills both 
lost their political lives to do his will, he refused to see 
them. 

Millions were made by the coterie about the White 
House in those last four years of Cleveland; made when 
an extra session ballooned the market; made with 
bond deals; made with tariff. Cleveland would ring 
out in tariff. The administration was doing all it 
might to put the Havemeyer schedule on sugar. And 
when Gorman wouldn't, Cleveland refused to sign the 
bill, and for ten days gave the longest possible limit of 
law to the Trust to bring in sugar free. That ten-day 
" pout " cost the Treasury ten million dollars and the 
people ten times more. 

Cleveland called an extra session; to the advantage 
of Benedict and the then White House circle of fa- 
vorites. Congress came; and he threw his patronage 
right and left and pidled on the ropes and worked at 
legislation like a common sailor. " Eepeal the pur- 
chasing clause of the Sherman law! " he said, " and the 
business sun will shine, the business grass will grow, 
and a deep and lush prosperity will be ours again." 
His prophecies fell flat with a great failure. It was 
the same in the tariff instance. It was the same with 
bonds. It was ever " do this " and " do that," and 
time and the tide will turn and good come riding in! 
From first to last he was a false prophet. No one had 
the blessings of which he preached save the tariffitcs 
p.nd the bondites and the ones about the throne. The 



AND BONDS CAME. 269 

backstairs Cabinet and the pool with White House 
passkeys prospered mightily. The public interest went 
lank and worn and hungry. 

When Cleveland came in 1893 he found the Treasury 
on the rocks. He kept it there. He pounded a hole 
in the bottom and stuffed the leak with two hundred 
and forty million dollars' worth of bonds. He sold 
these at 104; and the next day they brought 120, and 
bring it as this is read. Had a Mayor of New York so 
indulged himself, a special Grand Jury would have 
been on his ready trail with horn of law and hound of 
inquiry. But bonds were to go and go and go again; 
and as a byplay, and just to show the sympathy which 
dwells between our millionaires, Carnegie's two hun- 
dred and forty thousand dollars' fine, imposed for 
rotten armor plates, was to be remitted. There was 
none of this during Harrison's term. Cold he was, 
unsocial he was, an unlovely soul at best; but honest 
was Harrison, and as lucid-pure as ice. 

When Cleveland came in, the bond-wolves began to 
howl and snarl about the gold. Carlisle planned in 
the early summer of ninety-three to do as Manning did 
in eighty-five. Cleveland took his pronunciamento 
from him, wrote it over, crossed out silver, and made 
Carlisle say that he would pay gold — nothing but gold 
— while a dollar shimmered in his till. That was what 
the bondites wanted. They bled three bond issues 
from the people. 

But these were the big weeds of Cleveland's govern- 
ment. The little ones flourished as rankly strong. 
The lighthouse-tender example was not wasted. The 
Dolphin — unpaid for to the dead John Roach — became 
a department yacht. One assistant secretary of the 



270 RICHARD CROEER. 

Treasury would junket in one revenue cutter to Alaska, 
while another assistant secretary ordered another 
revenue cutter from her station at Baltimore around 
to Fortress Monroe, for purely picnic purposes. The 
Commissioner of Immigration, — who reported fewer 
than three thousand paupers turned back in a year at 
an expense of two hundred and twenty-six thousand 
dollars, — not to be outdone, would take a learned assist- 
ant and plunge across Europe, from the Shetlands to 
the Dardanelles, for the " instruction of the Govern- 
ment in immigration "; while the Fish Commission 
went about its useful work by dispersing itself through- 
out the Maine lakes, where, with naphtha launches and 
much goods in bottles, it propagated fish. In this day 
Crime robs the Government with a gun — the rough and 
lusty method of the footpad. In that day it was bleed 
and embezzle and larcenize by indirection, while the 
public looked the other way. They drove Williams from 
Grant's Cabinet because his wife rode in a landaulet at 
the expense of the government. Williams lived too soon. 

Well! have done. The above exhibits a few of the 
easy high places in the Cleveland career. His adminis- 
tration was failure. Moreover, it was of revenge, of 
treason to the party, of wrong to public weal. At home 
the country was thrown to Wall Street; abroad it was 
made the laugh of Europe. Only one thing was right — 
the Venezuela utterance. And the dead Gresham did 
that. 

Still, one must be fair. Cleveland, as well as every 
President, has partial excuse for his delinquencies, 
whether they be ones overt or of omission. The office 
is tremendously bigger than the man. The office con- 
trols the occupant and drives him like a horse in har- 



THE BUILDERS WERE RIGHT. 271 

ness. The President can't half help himself, and in 
more than most of his action does as he's commanded, 
goes where he's compelled. The detail of Presidential 
effort, and as well its broader marks, i>re much predes- 
tined. It's as if one were made President of an ice- 
berg, or a glacier, or the Hudson River. The drift- 
ing of the one, the slow marching of the second down 
its glen, and the solemn sweep of the last, have each 
its simile in the journeying of a great nation along its 
lines of fate. No chance-created P3^gmy of a President 
may bridle or direct. One were as wise who strove to 
stanch the Mississippi with a wisp of straw. 

Cleveland's second elevation — and his rule from 1892 
to 1896 was worse than revolution — should last a cen- 
tury as a lesson to the people. It was the public, and 
not the " politicians," who demanded him. The poli- 
ticians objected, Tammany objected; but the people 
demanded, and the people had their way. The archi- 
tects and builders of party declined Cleveland; the 
people interfered and took him up. The stone which 
the builders rejected was made the cornerstone of the 
temple, and the subsequent history of that edifice 
showed that the builders were right. 



XVI. 

SNOBS, MY masters! 

It is a hard matter to save that country wh«re a fish sells for more 
than an ox. — Cato. 

He who lives without cynicism lives without safety, 
and hqte is but the other side of love. And what has 
that to do with us? Nothing, nothing, your worships; 
wherefore let us say no more about it. 

That one more loathly thing than work is idleness. 
These are the Scylla and Charybdis of existence; eter- 
nally are we destroyed in the whirlpool-suck of her 
with the dogs, or leaped upon and lost to the six dart- 
ing and hungry heads of that sister monster across the 
straits. Let us in such dilemma refuse our tasks; let 
us throw down the sculls of effort while the boat goes 
where she may. So shall we have motion without 
labor; something will gain accomplishment while noth- 
ing is done. This may be the middle course Ulysses 
tried for; the happy medium sought for by the sage. 
Let us go, then, with the currents. There is more and 
wider water down-stream than up, and as a ceremony 
it is far easier — while quite as graceful — to drift all 
day than pull an oar an hour. 

It is in one's mind to be cynical. And why not? 
These be days to make one bilious, and bile is the 
parent of cynicism. Idleness in purple, industry in 
homespun! Honesty at hard labor, wliile crime wears 

272 



THAT BEDLAM LARGESSE. 2^3 

the crown! Ah, well; it has been so in all the ages! 
True worth was ever a peasant and tilled the soil, and 
scum comes surely to the top. Futility is the fashion 
and Fashion is the king. Let us crowd to the throne- 
room. 

What fools we mortals be! Also, what snobs! One 
multimillionaire becomes benevolent with books. And 
all the sycophants are burning incense to him as if 
the incense bore insurance. That multimillionaire 
may found libraries, or rear spires, or place alms in 
the thin and claw-like hand of Want. Yet the gold of 
his charity shall wear the stain of the blood and the 
mire in which it was gathered. There's nothing novel, 
naught to shout over, in what this rich one is about. 
It has been done by sinful Wealth when, fear-threat- 
ened of Futurity, the Unknown of beyond-the-grave 
had it under cow in every age. And now, because it 
trembles before what will be and tires of what soddenly 
is, and starts on some crusade of Bedlam largesse, this 
Wealth won in wickedness is to have present halo and 
take its austere reverend stand among the saints. 

Well; and why not canonize it? It is only a hand- 
ful of years since a band of worshipful clergy gathered 
— a muster of surpliced Tories — and "sainted" Charles 
the First. " He died a martyr for his faith," they 
sobbed, and wrote his name on the holy list. It is a 
proud thought with some that sundry of their ancestors 
were busy when Charles was chopped, doing all they 
might to promote the " martyrdom " of our royal can- 
didate for saintship. 

What snobs we be! Even our colleges are poisoned 
of it, and one young billionaire is made the object of 
some college ballot honors for his " peerless social 



Sn RICHARD CROKER. 

genius." Yes, in good fact! our great schools are smit- 
ten of snobbery. " Seminaries of learning " — wrote 
John Quincy Adams in his diary — " seminaries of 
learning have been timeservers and sycophants in all 
ages." Adams would write more stingingly, were he 
here to-day. And themselves snobs, is it wonder the 
colleges suckle snobbery? Perhaps this last is to be 
traced to parents rather than the schools. Sure it is 
that herds of young ones are sent collegeward by the 
hope, not that they'll learn anything from lecture or 
from book, but rather that they may make the ac- 
quaintance of future rich weaklings, to become here- 
after in equal parts their patrons and their prey. 

What snobs we be! The clergy and the colleges lead 
while the journals beat the drum! The clergy? Yes, 
my friend! Is it a wedding of wealth? or a billion- 
dollar baptism? or a funeral where great riches remain? 
Then to altar or font or bier the certain clergy come 
darting like kites to a quarry. What snobs we be! 
Do you know that folk love and wed and are born and 
wearily die in Mott and Mulberry and Baxter and 
Essex and Hester streets, every day in the year, and 
that the last to be bothered by it is a bishop? 

Thank Heaven for the Eocky Mountains! They 
make at least one-third of the area of the United 
States, and the very " lay of the land " puts snobbery 
out of the question. The toady is topographically im- 
possible. Thank Heaven for the precipitous rudeness 
of the Rockies! They shall yet serve as the home of a 
strong and saving race — the American Swiss — who 
are to be the backbone of the country, as their crags are 
the backbone of the continent. 

Snobbery begins to obtain in politics as well as take 



AND TBE TRUSTS COME. 275 

a smirking hand in trade. The small bow before the 
strong; the little fag for the powerful. In politics the 
result is corruption; in commerce, Trusts. One is not 
mad with any ardor of pessimism. One has no mood 
to become of that group of ebb-tide patriots who deem 
it impossible to rule with innocence, and hold that 
every king must be a Catiline. One does not believe 
that every hill is a Calvary, everj^ reward a Cross; and 
that Truth is ever foundering, unsuccored, on shores it 
sought to save. One is not victim of any slackwater 
optimism, nor has one's hope been seized of a dyspepsia. 
One is sustained by one's religion of politics, which 
plants itself on the belief, as on a rock, that true repub- 
licanism is imperishable for that true republicanism is 
God. Yet while one does not fear, one submits one is 
not flattered of any present promise of the times. The 
hands of the dial, pointing to trouble, point to Trusts. 
It is a day of weakness and corruption in halls where 
law is made. One should meet one's times boldly. 
One should counsel war on what politically is. One is 
not to be with opportunists who weakly hesitate at dan- 
ger and would for peace be half a slave. One should 
not follow a Eousseau, who, failing to teach France to 
think, tamed himself to copy music that it might dance, 
and so gained sordid bread. Such is to starve the 
Man to feed the Beast. 

Monopoly, fecund of Trust, spawns like a pike; 
Principle, unmated of popular effort, lies in a barren 
bed. The enemy strengthens himself while folk idle. 
The march of the Trusts marks the march of Igno- 
rance; the sun of progress borders to an eclipse of 
Money and another Dark Age may descend. Someone 
once said that: " Law is the safest helmet." The value 



270 RICHABD CROKER. 

of the apothegm depends upon who wears this steel cap. 
If it be Honesty, good! But if Monopoly go to Wash- 
ington and forge itself some headpiece of a statute the 
story runs fearfully different. It is not always true 
that a State has added to its safety when it has added 
to its laws. As things are, one is all but free to say 
that one despairs of virtuous legislation. In those law- 
lists, Right seems ever to go down before the shock of 
Riches. There should be change — change unusual and 
change that reaches far. 

" It is better to be a poor fisherman than to meddle 
with the government of men," said Danton. But the 
Frenchman was in a tumbrel at the time and suffered 
some coming confusion of the guillotine. Had he been 
given freedom and a sober second thought, he would 
have seen that the citizen is driven to " meddle with 
government " to keep it from meddling villainously 
with him. Therefore, let the public become intelli- 
gently meddlesome. Nor should it hesitate; nor go 
halfway. There should come no blackmail of a 
partial peace. It is the worst of oppression that 
makes craven terms with tyranny. This is an era of 
potato-bug politics. Monopoly devours what the 
people rear. Some stand must be made, some near and 
stubborn stand, or the century will witness us destroyed 
and overrun. He will be wise of that day who, living 
without flag as without citizenship, carries his country 
on the sole of his shoe. 

It will be warfare hard and breathless; this stand 
against Monopoly. These combines of rapacity and 
capital which, as Lord Thurlow puts it, " Have neither 
souls to lose nor bodies to kick," are the folk difficult. 
Much of peril, too, comes from the turned-'round con- 



THE RED BRXTTEMAN. ^11 

dition of the common taste. There is too much luxury, 
too much excess; too many for themselves, too few for 
all, and Virtue plays a second violin. We have come 
too far from a simplicity of the fathers which made 
that middle safety between the politically too-little and 
too-much. The edge of civic apprehension is lost. 
One sees this in the absolute honesty of many of the 
Trust-makers in their dishonesty. One sees it in that 
stolid disregard which the public to be exploited be- 
stows upon them. 

There is a coarse red Man who preaches Trusts as a 
principle. He stands close to the American throne and 
is its prop. He is no hypocrite; he believes what he pro- 
claims. It is only that his Titan interests are yoked of 
an ignorance equally Titanic. Like some toad in 
stone, he is become imbedded in his own affairs and 
exists unreachable of any touch not having source in 
self. Such malignants as this Man, by an imbecile in- 
tegrity, become a double danger. There's a sin that's 
honest, just as there's a hate that declines a bribe as 
soon as love. Even such rude and brutish aggressionists 
as this Man, commerce-gorged and money-fat, may be 
acting veraciously by their blurred lights, and so pass 
guiltless of moral turpitude. What they do, like the 
handless acts of a rattlesnake, may plead the defense of 
nature. 

Indeed, one is inclined to this theory, for one has be- 
held the leaden wonder of this Man on a strike occa- 
sion when poor folk begged. He looked on them as if 
happiness were a new idea, and common justice yet to 
have invention. The swinishness of the Man could 
conceive of no rule save the rule of desire; and in this 
savage staring there shone a hideous humor. It would 



278 RICHARD CRORER. 

have been comedy had it not been tragedy, and were it 
possible for murder to furnish fun. 

For all that, while one may excuse of sin such as this 
Man, as one holds blameless some dumb, unmindful 
beast, they must still be met and dealt with. These 
heathen of riches are in want of baptism anew. 
Their times cry for that priest to say to them as spoke 
the Church to the wild Clovis: " Bend thy neck, proud 
Sicambrian; adore what thou hast burned, burn what 
thou hast adored! " 

But one should not wax over-weary; one's hurts are 
doubtless part of the day's work. One might better 
pause. Sisyphus should have occasional repose; and 
Apollo can't always be bending his bow. Talk is tire- 
some alike to talker and him talked to. Also, to preach 
danger to some timid ones is to shoot at a loon on a 
lake. They dive at the first flash of phrase and are 
under water before any bullet of argument or fact at- 
tains to them. Moreover, one's inspiration must be 
rested and baited of a new Hope. There be tired times 
when one loses faith in one's very self. One sees so 
much of the unexpected cart-before-the-horse. It 
daunts one's reason and bids it doubt itself. The mag- 
net lies still, the steel filings ramp and fasten; yet one 
learns, before one is done, that it was the magnet that 
furnished the impulse and the activities of the steel- 
dust were compelled. And so it runs throughout, and 
defeats the blushes of ardent young Conclusion. The 
magnet attracts, the passive controls, the alkali has 
kingdom over the acid, weakness is power, and one be- 
gins to know with the German that " the female 
selects." And so one is taught to discount the 
voice of Reason. One even concludes that were 



QREED AND MONOPOLY. 279 

folk to take chart of deduction and compass of con- 
jecture, and, chucking both overboard, steer by 
lights of fixed instinct, all would come better off. 
It is by no means clear, since Monopoly holds the 
torch, that existence is such laughter. Monopoly has 
driven happiness from half the earth and cut down the 
visible supply of joy by fifty per cent. One was ex- 
pected of Omnipotence to have a good time aboard this 
rolling, weltering world of ours, plowing its blind 
course through rimless ages. One was not sent to 
suffer. But Greed and Monopoly, working in latter 
times to produce the Trust, have seized on what was 
meant as a craft of comfort and made a galley of her. 
They have chained each to his oar, there to toil till his 
heart breaks. 

And there is a gap in the walls where enters a half 
hopelessness. There be folk who agree to their bonds 
as to the will of Fate and forget the freedom that be- 
longs to them. The capacities of these feebleized ones 
are crippled. Mindless, unlighted as to their rights, 
they also dwell in midnight concerning their responsi- 
bilities. They are, roundly, bad citizens. They com- 
prise that wrong, respectable lot who hesitate over a 
consequence rather than an act. Their moral thought 
is all ajar. They shrink from a capture, not a felony; 
they have forgotten what Mme. Roland remembered 
— that shame is not of the scaffold, but of the crime. 
With such code, and with the further conviction that 
Money is the only nobleman, given safety for their per- 
sons and their " reputations," these gentry, of no color, 
abide abjectly docile to Money's word and rein. 

Still these spaniel people — these weak ones in good 
clothes, who crouch before the upraised thong of 



280 RICHARD GROKER. 

Money — are not the virile ones. And some day there'll 
come grief. Some particular outrage will set the 
brand to the growing long-grass of a public resentment, 
and woe will spread like a prairie fire. And with the 
horizon of coming time more than half consented to as 
filled with the dark topsails of trouble on its way, 
what do the "parties" do? What do our great con- 
tending armies of politics offer to the day's defense? 
Democracy proffers nothing and does less. The Ee- 
publican remedy is to swell the Army and poke the fire 
with a sword. 

We sit too much in the shadows; we are too much 
ridden of a superstition of Money. We are too apt at 
hat-doffing and to remove our shoes and fall on our 
knees before a million dollars. In older Europe and 
an elder day, the noble kicked the peasant, the king 
kicked the noble, and the Church kicked the king. 
That wasn't so bad as now and here, when Money 
alone does the kicking — kicks the public with that 
threefold force Avhich aforetime found triangular di- 
version and distribution. That's a prime malady of 
our hour; we enthrone Riches. We are taught this by 
papers which rave over a billion-dollar babe, or swoon at 
the spectacle of a millionaire in a " common jury box." 
The world should be too manly and too wise to tolerate 
such tutelage. As if a babe in an ivory crib, with 
swan's-down swathings, sucking milk from cut glass, 
were any more a babe! As though a millionaire in a jury 
box were other than any highly muddled gentleman in 
like position! It is at this pinch that correction should 
seize humanity by its truckling collar and straighten 
it up. 

If one bows one's self at the seat of Money, why 



THE SYSTEM OF THE BEAR. 281 

shouldn't Money set foot on one's neck? If one pro- 
claim one's self serf, why shouldn't Money proclaim its 
mastery? Stand up, man! brush the dust off your 
knees, scuffle into your shoes, get your hat on, and 
assume some self-respecting virtue though you have it 
not. If it's money you want, be something more than 
slave, and you may win some. Crouch, and it's sure 
you'll have naught save cuffs and crumbs. Never hesi- 
tate; face Money. Then it is harmless; it couldn't 
reach one in a round of ages. Fear not to look a mil- 
lion dollars in the eye; it will turn and skulk the other 
way like any other brute. 

Time was when I sprawled about the Eocky Moun- 
tains; I waxed conversant of rattlesnakes and was a 
student of bears. Also I took a course of Indian. 
These taught me that the systems of savagery are mas- 
ters of the systems of civilization; that the primitive 
has power over the modern, and that money doesn't 
count with a bear. Encounter a savage and he forces 
his method upon you. Our troops can't compel the 
Indians to fight their fashion; the savages force our 
soldiery to fight fheir fashion. One may be the best 
boxer, the best wrestler, the best debater, or the best 
thinker; and yet should one become entangled of a 
bear, he'll make one fight bear-fashion. He won't box, 
nor wrestle, nor talk, nor think; and he won't let you. 
That bear will hunt or hug or maul or crunch or dally 
with a millionaire as if the victim didn't have a dol- 
lar. And the latter's millions will have with the bear 
no more of current avail than an Irish billet of ex- 
change. The right American, in the political presence 
of Money, should adopt the sturdy system of the bear. 
If you meet a man and he has a million — and many a 



282 RICHARD CROKER. 

good man has — respect the man and don't mind the 
money. If you discover a man and he hasn't a mil- 
lion — if he be even moneyless — respect the man and 
don't let the absence of that million discourage you. 
That is what a bear would do; and if you will but emu- 
late this bear-example, the rule of riches will be broken, 
and Money, from the high places which your parasite 
sort has permitted it, will falter and fall away. 

And in reaching for a remedy, oh, American beset! 
one should fail not, with all the rest, to address the 
President. One has but to reach and teach him, to 
accomplish most in mendment of an hour. He is the 
man at the wheel; affect a President, and one affects a 
course. One should be firm and plain and cool and 
make one's self apparent. One should appeal, for 
specimen, like this: 

Your Excellency: There is no impulse of insult in 
this. There is also little hope. You present the 
dampening question of unknown incapacity. You are 
a cavern of a man; hollow, dark, and with little to 
tempt to exploration. You do not say much; yet your 
wordlessness offers nothing to confidence. Cowley, 
the Englishman, remarked of a lesser Napoleon: " He 
never speaks and always lies." And by this light 
there's that of parallel between folk one wots of and 
the Frenchman. 

While you are but little relied on, you have still at- 
tained to the Presidency. You have scaled the highest 
peak of the Alps of politics. And whether as Presi- 
dent you be the offspring of accident or evil coldly 
planned, you should yet have a pride of perch and yearn 
to leave a name half worth a shaft at least. And this 
you might well do. You know the sickness of the 



PLAY THE PATRIOT. 283 

times. We are cankered serfs of Monopoly. The 
Trusts have us in chains. Caesar boasted that he found 
Eome brick and left her marble. You may have a 
prouder word. You may write of yoUr regime: " I 
found Eome slave and left her free." 

Why not play what's termed the " patriot " ? Why 
wouldn't it be, personally and politically, wise and good 
to stand for the many and against the few? Hayes, a 
predecessor who left the Presidency to promote a 
poultry hastening to decay — once stated: "He serves 
best his party who serves the public best." And Hayes 
was right. Defend the common weal. You will 
thereby sustain your to-day while making certain your 
to-morrow of renown. This is within your ready 
swing. Think, man! One may look to one's future, 
while one secures and makes sure one's present; so 
order one's existence as to be ready to die at once or 
live one hundred years. And thus may you do. 
Honesty and a championship of the people would bring 
encomium now and shape your fame forever. 

It is beating against wind and tide to talk to you. 
And yet, even with the small hope of landing, one must 
press on. He who teaches a king, if it be no more than 
one right syllable, befriends a people; one should not 
surrender, therefore, without a struggle the chance of 
touching you. As the hour trends, Monopoly is to have 
finally all. And in that devoured day we will as a 
nation present a lonely case of " naught but green 
fields, a shepherd and a dog"; with Money the shep- 
herd, and Government the dog to herd and drive the 
people to the shearing-sheds. You, in the White 
House, could avert this and change the currents of 
calamity. He would be thrice a felon who should fail, 



284 BICHARD CROKER. 

Do you cavil at a turgidity of phrase? You need 
not. This is but a poor occasion to insist on any rose 
water of words. An order in that scented behalf would 
go unheeded. Thiers complained of Bismarck, as they 
bickered diplomatically over terms of peace, that the 
Iron Chancellor spoke German instead of French. 
"Do I?" responded Bismarck. "That cannot be 
helped, my friend. When I confer with one, and 
mean that he shall have his way, I speak his language. 
When I intend to have my way, I speak my own." One 
does not presume to any Bismarckian power of coer- 
cion. But, for somewhat a Prussian reason, one pre- 
fers to be explicit in one's native tongue and way. 

One will not, oh, Excellency! rehearse to your con- 
fusion any abandonment of the platform on which you 
placed yourself to ask for votes. Platforms are the 
humbug of politics. They are the bell-ringing before 
the auction; their purpose is to call a crowd, not make 
a price. In this experienced day, he who is misled by 
them is deeply dense. The voter should ignore a plat- 
form to look hard at a candidate. He should put the 
man above the argument in his consideration; it is the 
horse and not the harness that pulls the load, or kicks, 
or bolts, or balks, or runs away. One is not shocked 
because you turned your elected back on the platform. 
Nor does one declaim against partisanship in your 
appointments. You would be weak, indeed, when 
charged with the responsibility of the day, did you call 
any to a guard-tower of government not of your own 
and trusted clan. But the right to be partisan does not 
mean the right to betray a principle. And as a pilot 
you are bound to faithfulness and to remember and 
mind your marks. 



A GORILLA OF GOLD. 285 

However, it is not concerning such as platforms and 
partisanship that one is in present earnest. One is 
but warm to have you to the warpath against Mo- 
nopoly. As an earlier, necessary step you should rid 
yourself of management. Management belittles you 
by its mere existence. True! it was management which 
named you and elected you at the polls. Yet it fought 
for its own hand. You owe naught of debt to manage- 
ment, either as candidate or President. And if you 
did, you would still have small right to give it a White 
House for four years. You should begin your fame- 
hunt and your quest of public good by turning it away. 
While management has you in its vulgar fingers, you 
will never teach history that you are of that timber to 
make a President; still less of the marble from which 
to carve a god. 

Even if you were to politically rebel against its 
masterful eye, management could not destroy you. 
And if it could? " No man," saith the Spartan, " can 
be truly free who fears to die." And this, if rightly 
looked at, points to management and applies to you. 
Put management from you at all hazard, and as a 
brave preliminary to being great. 

Think of the turnspit littleness of the attitude 
management forces you to keep. You are made to 
dance attendance on its word. It packs you with that 
puppetry which is to amuse and please its vacation. 
What a prideless destiny is this! You, a President, to 
deck the ignorant leisure of a mere gorilla of gold! 
Can a winnowing future, seeking wheat from chaff, 
deem well of you on these lacking terms? Therefore 
make yourself glorious by revolt, and grant yourself a 
serious recrudescence as President and man. You 



286 BICHARD CROKER. 

must revive in rebellion against management or hope 
of fame is gone. 

You say that as a country we are making money? 
And if it be so, is that the whole of liberty and the last 
best word of life? We are rich, yes; that is, rich in a 
certain way of dismal disproportion. It were better 
were we not so rich. Of what advantage are a few more 
feathers and a few more gems that but wave and glisten 
to breed vanity in a foolish few, and envy in a foolish 
many? Eich, yes. Too often, however, in that gam- 
bling, workless, sudden fashion of treasure trove. To 
tumble to great fortune is seldom good, even for that 
envied one who tumbles. It is an unsettling disaster 
to all who look on. Let us call ourselves rich, then, 
and make swaggering sentences concerning it. And 
while we do, our taxes are growing, our debts are 
growing, our army is growing, our rights are 
going, and Money has more and men have daily 
less to say. Is that a burnished story? And yet, you 
might change all with a blow and take your place with 
the Immortals. Do you find no trumpet-blown induce- 
ment in such chance? Suppose your present right- 
journeying would mean challenge to management, and 
through that frame disappointment to a list of leeches? 
There is a money-itching tribe that bear the relation 
to government that wolves do to sheep-culture. They 
do not add to general profit, though they roll in fat 
themselves. Such gnawing folk are worthy no regard. 
Their good means public loss; a stab at them is to re- 
new ourselves in liberty. 

This is a call to duty and these be oaken words. 
They smell of midnight and the wick; and you should 
weigh them. The times grant naturalization to the 



t 



THE RADIANT WRONG. 28*7 

devil and make a citizen of him. He puts money in the 
bank and leads in politics. Right crawls in tatters 
to its kennel; Wrong, at pleasant ease, goes radiant of 
its gold. As affairs turn, the Revolution was fought 
too soon; Bunker Hill was premature; Valley Forge was 
failure and Yorktown a mistake. 



XVII. 

HILL AND GOKMAN. 

In the distracted times when each man dreads 
The bloody stratagems of busy heads. 
—Otway. 

"Tammany Hall," observed Richard Croker, 
" could gain no mounting good from a White House, 
however much the latter might be friendly or inclined 
to give it aid. The organization is entirely local in 
its domain of toil. It must, of course, be regular; 
and, therefore, Tammany must work its best in a 
national campaign for the general ticket, and it ever 
does. But the New York City vote is peculiar. There 
are hundreds here who are against us nationally, while 
locally they are with us. And so, as the conflict shifts 
from city to country, our friends are frequently our 
foes; later, when the war returns to the town, they 
become our friends again. It is such conditions which 
make a national campaign nothing save a season of 
peril for Tammany Hall. Should the party succeed, 
the best we could have M^ould amount to no more than 
a minimum of good to the organization; the most that 
we commonly hope is to escape without getting hurt." 

Croker does not hunger to have prominent part in 
any President-making. In such crackling enter- 
prises it ever has been that Tammany's lot in the 
melodrama was the blistering role of catspaw. Still, 
Croker bears steadily his burden with Tammany in 



TWO PRESIDENTIAL PRATERS. 289 

the national debate. Nor does he shrink nor seek to 
evade what he believes to be a duty. He is ever sin- 
cere, ever squarely aggressive; indeed, in the contest 
of 1900, he stood alone representative of about all the 
" management " the general Democracy received. 

Following Kelly, when Croker took supreme com- 
mand of Tammany Hall, there were two of the party 
to be prominent in national politics — and each had a 
Presidential prayer — with whom he was brought into 
close and sudden relations. These were David Bennett 
Hill and Arthur Pue Gorman. Croker, who is quick in 
his regards, liked the latter while he distrusted the first. 
AVhen Croker was given the baton, Cleveland abode 
in the White House, while Hill, promoted from a Lieu- 
tenant-Governorship by Cleveland's departure to a 
Presidency, ruled at Albany. Hill was eager to suc- 
ceed himself as a Governor regularly named and 
elected. It was a crisis in the fortunes of Hill. If he 
were not set to lead the State's ticket in the next 
campaign, he would go to the bottom like an anvil; 
the waters of a lost opportunity would close forever 
over his drowned head. Thus was Hill placed; and his 
fate was in the hands of Croker. 

There were those of power in Tammany who advised 
against him; they wanted none of Hill. Croker stood 
alone; yet he had his will. Croker decided for Hill, 
and Hill it was. Both the records of the convention, 
as well as the count of ballots at the polls, display that 
Hill became Governor because of Croker's support. 
There is some shimmer of a thought, too, that Gorman, 
then in the Senate from Maryland, late manager of 
the Cleveland campaign, close friend of Croker, and 
with his own plans of a White House residence for 



290 RICHARD CROKER. 

himself, had somewhat to do with Croker's choice of 
Hill. Be that as it may, the lapse and changes of 
time have rendered the event more curious than im- 
portant. 

Hill studied for politics as some study for orders in a 
church. His school was hard as emerald in its lesson- 
list. It taught the art of alliance, the science of com- 
bination; and it overlooked the humanities of politics. 
No inference of money-badness should adhere to Hill. 
No one, whether friend or closest foe, in maddest 
flights, ever fancied Hill in any dubious connection 
with a dollar. 

Hill is unpleasant to the eye; more unpleasant when 
come in contact with. His atmosphere is bright but 
cold, as if the sun glanced on an ice field. Nor are his 
manners of the school which charms; he has no polish. 
Force seldom means polish; and Hill is force. Hill is 
not a general, he's an overseer; he never leads, he 
drives. He commands, true; but always from the 
rear. It is not cowardice; Hill feels the necessity of 
making his people fight beneath sweep of eye. 

This last is because of Hill's strong instinct of lone- 
liness. Hill knows he has no friend. He has allies, 
has confederates; they are such to-day and foes to-mor- 
row; but Hill is never loved. No one will sacrifice for 
Hill; none die for him. Hill is no Napoleon to inspire 
affection in those who come about him. At the best, 
Hill is but a guerrilla of party — some Quantrell of 
politics. 

Hill is honest with his adherents. Let them but 
conquer; each shall take his share of booty. The 
scales of distribution are held Justly in the hands of 
Hill. One of Hill's tenets is " spoils." And in this 



THE SPOILS SYSTEM. 291 

applause of the spoils system, Hill is sincere. He is 
not like Cleveland; to beg for men's aid, to turn his 
back on them in victory. Hill, while places last, gives 
to his followers without stint. Whatever is conquered, 
whatever comes as captive of his sword, is apportioned 
among them. 

Hill had such training as the hard class-room of his 
time could give him. He was taught that no flower 
of sentiment swa3^ed its perfumed head in politics. He 
learned to face his foe hardily, fight grimly to the end, 
and, if needs must, die in silence — mute as fox among 
the hounds. When he won, he was to take everything 
that might strengthen himself or comfort his people. 

Mentally, Hill is rough and rugged; he looks a fact 
in the face. His plans run ever and always to a fight. 
This is in contrast to Gorman. That statesman seeks 
to attain the object direct. Hill plans to a fight; if 
he wins the fight, he gains the object. 

Yet Hill is, after all, the creature of his contracted 
school. He is essentially a State politician. His poli- 
cies are not national. Through every method the 
ward-lines show too plainly. And with this weakness of 
the provincial, Hill couples a lamentable failure to 
know men. He would quit his seat in the Senate, re- 
pair to O'Ferrall's committee room in the House, to 
bully that Virginian against his conscience in the 
Eockwell contest case. Hill had not met O'Ferrall; 
didn't know whether he were hazel or oak, craven or 
brave, a priest of peace or some fray-fed berserk. And 
yet in this darkness as to the character of him he was 
to meet, with a full-blown Presidential hope to risk. 
Hill went. It was a move that many a born fool would 
have known enough to avoid engaging himself about. 



292 RICHARD CROKER. 

Hill had sorrow and pain as his guerdon. O'Ferrall 
denounced and defied him; he promised him, had the 
interview befallen but five years before when the 
O'Ferrall blood was quicker, that he, O'Ferrall, would 
have threshed him like a shock of grain. 

Had Hill been nationally wise, in the height of his 
White House reachings of 1892, he would not have 
gone southward on a special car to upbuild fences. 
He could have done nothing to sooner fire a Southern 
distrust of him, nor breed against him a Southern 
opposition. 

Hill in person is w^ell fashioned. He is of height; 
of good breadth of shoulder. One gets the impression 
of physical strength from Hill; almost of physical 
ferocity. With black eyes and black hair — what fringe 
there is to hold its desperate ground behind his ears — 
and black coat, Hill ofl'ers a somber effect. x\nd, with a 
face pale to sallowness, finishing below on a shirtfront 
of dead white, this somberness becomes sinister. 
These, added to a lawlessness of soul which lurks in 
the man, confer an outlaw atmosphere that repels. 
What is most admirable in Hill is his forensic courage; 
what most wonderful is his intellect. He thinks with 
the openness of noon. Yet, his mind is of the earth. 
It spreads no wings of fancy. Hill will never soar; 
never move one's soul with eloquence, nor write a 
poem. 

Despite his black hair and bilious skin, when one has 
studied Hill, it will claim one as a thought that there 
is much of the old Dane about him. What a viking 
he would have made! How he would have worshiped 
Thor, held his horse festivals, and drunk from the 
skull of his enemy! This Norse thought may come 



A MENTAL PANTHER. 293 

from the fact that Hill is destructive rather than con- 
structive in his talents. Destruction is an easy work; 
a laborer of roughest sort can throw down more 
masonry than two hundred skilled workmen in equal 
time can rear. But destruction is none the less 
majestic and engaging. Also there is something in- 
nately popular in destruction; it tends to equalization. 
While Hill's intellect dwells on the ground, it is 
ever swift and darting. It proceeds with the accurate 
power of a panther. Hill springs on conclusion, and 
is seldom wrong. Hill for selfish cause goes often 
against his beliefs. Within himself, in 1896, Hill was 
for Silver; for an income tax — that measure he fought 
so long and jealously. He was brought in opposition 
to these by stress of money-folk. One knows not the 
bond between them; one does know that the men-of- 
money have many times controlled the direction, 
though not the detail, of Hill's course. It was not 
money in the coarser sense; Hill is not a money-lover. 
Money for money's single sake is secondary. He seeks 
it, spends it as incident to life; and that is all. He 
neither keeps nor cares for money. And yet it is 
Money that guides Hill. And it has more often than 
once carried him into the wastes of political mistake. 
Napoleon conceded that Providence took a part in 
battle, and determined its close. But Napoleon added 
that Providence fought ever for those who owned the 
heaviest artillery. Hill may remember Napoleon in 
his strifes of politics. Avoiding a trap of what seems 
temporary success. Hill, doubtless, clings to that flag 
with money in the belief, long run or short run, that 
Providence fights ultimately for that party which has 
the heaviest bank accounts. But Hill trips himself with 



294 RtCHAHD CBOKER. 

error. In his never-ending arrangement of the present 
to bring a future personal advantage. Hill makes mis- 
takes. There have been too many of these. Hill's 
end is on its way. It will come, and none will mourn 
him; his funeral will be as lonesome as his life. 

In politics Hill is sincere without being bravely 
honest in the honest sense. That is the Hill flaw. 
Hill's conception of men is artificial; he deems each an 
office-hunter. He cannot be taught of that army of 
folk who neither hope nor hunt for place, and the 
sole purpose of whose voting is to promote right 
government among men. The great world — however 
unsteadily — aims at good government; Hill aims at 
power through the holding of high office. With each, 
politics is a method; but the object sought is not the 
same. And Hill cannot understand that probity of 
motive on the world's part which does not exist with 
himself. And so he falls wrong; and thus he ever plays 
and makes his game too fine. That is the truth at the 
bottom of the troubled well of Hill. He does not 
know mankind; doesn't apprehend the race in its sim- 
plicity. And so Hill fails to be with the general march; 
he turns ever wrong to perish in some wilderness of 
neglect and lack of confidence. 

Hill has no true idea of a popularity. One may 
know this by his wifeless state. Folk will not trust 
your bachelor publicist. Politics is with the mass the 
merest condition of sentiment and the approval of a 
personality. Folk talk of the issue, but they vote for 
the man. And as a first concession to sentiment, they 
demand that he to whom they trust great office come 
with the indorsement of some woman who loves 
and clings to him. The bachelor at fifty is a political 



THE POLITICAL SUSPECT. 295 

suspect. The world doubts him, declines him, wagging 
its sage head. It loves him not. Hill, with all his 
sleight for caucus, primary, and convention, does not 
know these merest rudiments of his art of votes. No 
mate has borne him altarward. He has suffered for it 
in his career. Hill has aversion to women. The 
Senate, while he was there, was guarded by his order 
to bring him in no word from them. He would not 
meet with women, would not talk with them. At the 
piost, they might see him by proxy; they might send a 
man. 

While Hill is in retreat before woman — not the 
amiable rout of one bashful, but the retreat that 
skulks backward, shows its teeth and bristles — he will 
face men like a lion. And he is frank to talk. He 
has no confidants; none dwell so near him as that; but 
he will talk with a fierce indifference as to what he 
says that borders on the reckless. He comes readily 
to his portal at any summons, does Hill. 

" What do you want? " asks Hill. 

Propound; and he replies with directness, where 
others, who assume a freer air, double and deceive. 

Hill is apt to speak the truth. Not from aught of 
moral thought; but at the worst he prefers to tell the 
truth and fight. His political courage is of proof. He 
will cast his glove in the face of triple odds. 

" Hill " — said the late Senator Coke, with his queer 
lisp and a look of sober ingenuousness — " Hill is a won- 
derful man. He's bigger than we thought when he 
first came to the Senate. And he'll not only fight, but 
by nature he's a desperado. If Hill had been brought 
up in Texas, I reckon he'd 'a' killed a dozen men by 
now." 



296 RICHARD CROKER. 

Coke was in earnest, and Coke was right. One 
might observe Hill from the Senate gallery. A love 
and lust for combat laired in the heart of Hill. 
He would engage with careless liberality against Harris 
and Morgan and Mills. As if the odds were still 
unequal to his thirst for rough collision, Hill would 
abruptly turn and with harshest taunt enroll Gray 
among his adversaries. And, more marvelous, Hill 
would quarrel this quartette to a standstill; absolutely 
defeat them into silence. 

It was these Senate joustings against numbers that 
told much. One cannot drive Hill from a subject. He'll 
no more take his eyes off the casus belli than will a 
gazehound off the hare he follows. Hill sticks to the 
business at bay. The war itself may wander, the battle 
stagger to new fields; Hill will not lose sight of the 
issue, nor forget what called him to his arms. If a 
moveless courage could always attain the subject con- 
tended for, peace would ever discover Hill in its 
possession. Hill's assaults forensic have no furtivities 
of execution. He slays his rival directly in hot blood; 
carries forward his slaughter with all the noise and din 
which belong to it. 

By nature Hill is a knife-fighter. The courage of a 
race may be read in the length of its weapons. And 
what is true of races is as true of men. The Roman 
short sword and the American bowie knife mark the 
highest type of fighting courage. He who wields either 
looks to go close in and expects to come back covered 
with blood. He considers not his own safety so much 
as the destruction of his enemy. And such is Hill. 
"When he debates, he makes curious figure-eight move- 
ments, with his extended right hand. These are the 



ARTHUR PUE GORMAN. 297 

veriest fence of the bowie knife. As Hill scores a 
point, he thrusts his hand straight forward like the 
head of a rattlesnake. It is at such times he pierces 
his opponent. But Hill has an integrity in his ferocity. 
He is Anglo-Dane, for all his hair and eyes. He makes 
no ambushments; he poisons no water-holes; sets no 
traps nor snap-haunches. 

Hill does now and then the unaccountable. He will 
wage a ten-year war with Cleveland, and next, for no 
reason one may wot of, Hill goes to a White House 
dinner, and then submits to subsequent Senate stulti- 
fication by defending the worst measures of the Ad- 
ministration. Hill is not always to be understood. He 
has courage, he has wisdom; moreover, he is the man 
practical and lives unhampered of a past. Tradition 
is nothing to him, precedent but dust. He has no 
reverence, he is not cautious, and he'll clash with one 
or all who, for love or heavier cause, would take to the 
lists with him. And yet, with so much that is excellent 
as against the little that is not, Hill is not beloved of 
men. They who follow him gain no sense of loyalty 
to Hill. And it was written, for these reasons of no 
love, that Hill must fall. He will come finally to be a 
lone hermit of politics, a beggar-man of party, telling 
his beads in unanswered prayers for power. And none 
will visit while he lives his cell, nor when he dies his 
shrine. 

Gorman is a different picture. With his monk's face, 
his repose, his quiet eyes, his chaste dignity, Gorman 
fills the vision pleasantly enough. Nowhere in appear- 
ance does Gorman jar on one. Physically he is neither 
big nor little; mentally he is much the same. Politics 
with Gorman is an accident and not a creed. He is a 



298 RICHARD CROKER. 

good thinker in a way of egotism; with himself at stake, 
his impulse acts powerfully as auxiliary to his reason. 
In temper Gorman is timid and shy. But, ambitious 
as a Bonaparte and as egotistical, his purpose is often 
elevated and the game he hunts is big. Wherefore, 
much that he does seems daring. What one takes to be 
daring, however, is naught save the expression of a 
hunger to have, which, now and then, overrunning 
itself, carries him into peril. 

Gorman has tact, is diplomatic — an apostle of the 
indirect. He is as crafty as a coyote and as lurking. 
And like your coyote he never faces danger. As far 
and as fast as he may, he flies. If overtaken or cor- 
nered, he will snap. And his jaws cut like razors. But 
even this snapping is defensive and ceases the moment 
the pressure is removed. There is the sharpest of 
antithesis between Gorman and Hill. Where Hill has 
valor, Gorman has strategy; where Hill is Dane, Gor- 
man is Hindoo; where Hill becomes berserk, Gorman 
turns Borgia, empoisons a bunch of forget-me-not and 
sends it to his enemy with a love-note full of heart- 
regard and warmth. If it were the old days in Rome, 
and Gorman and Hill were made to fight in the arena, 
Hill would pick up the buckler and the short sword. 
Nor would he lay emphasis on the buckler; it would 
hang on his left arm more as a matter of form. Gor- 
man would take net and trident, crouch as he faced 
his foe, and attack 'retreating. Gorman, as written 
before, is the Hindoo. And just as the Hindoo with 
his crafts, his opiums, his hypnotisms, his cords of 
silk, and his assassin's creese as crooked as his tongue, 
is more to be feared than some bugle-blowing cham- 
pion who makes tenderly sure the enemy is wide-awake 



GORMAN'S BEGINNING. 299 

and in array, so is Gorman more dangerous than 
Hill. 

Where does Gorman get this trick to set snares and 
dig pits and hide when he hears one eoriiing? It is due 
in part to an environment, in part to breed. Gorman's 
father was a Peter Gorman. The elder Gorman had 
fame about the lobbies of congresses long dead. 
When Gorman was twelve, his father, who was of the 
Eepublicans, — for with him, as with the present Gor- 
man, politics came to be merely a lane to a field which 
one meant to sow and reap, — put him page to the 
Senate. For seventeen years, enrolled in posts ranging 
from page to postmaster, Gorman obeyed the Senate 
and did its errands. 

In a day which stewed in its own corruption, and 
among men many of whom esteemed chicane, subter- 
fuge, and direct mendacity as virtues beyond price, 
Gorman passed his bayhood. At an age when character 
is formed, and the lessons of one's life are taught and 
learned, Gorman had every day to fly and hide and 
supple himself to be preserved. No matter the op- 
pression, all the boy Gorman could do was run. Eun 
and keep running. Eun from the shadow as well as 
the substance; from the true as well as the false; from 
the right as from the wrong — run from everything. 
And if pursued and overtaken, stave off execution until 
opportunity opened to run again. That was the boyish 
destiny of Gorman; the destiny of a daily fugitive. Is 
it wonder that he came from such school with less 
courage than craft, and less conscience than courage? 

Gorman has no profession, no trade, and some edu- 
cation. His calling is politics, his purpose to hold 
office, his object to be rich. He has had success. He 



300 RICHARD CROKER. 

was Senator from Maryland, and he is worth two 
millions of dollars. Gorman made politics pay. 

That Gorman has his ways of power is shown by his 
passing a tariff measure and making it law in the teeth 
of the House and the White House. He made the 
Wilson-Gorman tariff with a majority of one. He 
had three by count; but he began by thrusting Hill — 
once his tool, then inveterate with mutiny against him 
— overboard. Gorman debarred Hill even from the 
party caucus. That he is master of a wool-foot cun- 
ning appears from his winning the tariff without noise, 
or fury, or the disclosure of his own convictions on 
that point of cardinal politics. No one knows, nor 
does his record show, whether Gorman is for pro- 
tection, a tariff for revenue, or free trade. Also, Hill 
and a dozen others nearly burned themselves alive 
trying to smoke Gorman out. 

That Gorman will snap when cornered was indicated 
in his Senate speech assailing Cleveland. And that he 
lacks a common courage is told when he talks with 
Cleveland for half an hour on the morning of the day 
the speech is delivered, and does not mention its ap- 
proach to that President most interested. 

Before he came to the Senate Gorman was limited 
to Maryland. Until his Senate promotion he had 
busied himseif, vine-like, in overcreeping the Maryland 
Democracy, and succeeded in covering it, trunk 
and bough and smallest twig. Gorman was not de- 
lightful to the aristocracy of Maryland — the Carrolls, 
the Worthingtons, and the Pinckney-Whytes. But their 
systems were antique, Gorman's modern. He used 
telephones, telegraphs, and steam; they plodded 
with the old-fashioned school of horseback, saddle- 



A MARYLAND MONARCH. 301 

bag politics. And Gorman defeated them, walked over 
them, and was monarch of Maryland. Then he 
came to the Senate. And then it was he resolved 
in silence to become President. From that hour 
when he took his oath as Senator back in the late 
seventies, he held a White House in his eye. 

As Gorman stood in the Senate he burned secretly 
to become national in repute. But wary, careful, a 
soul of shadows and concealments, he said nothing 
and abode his time. It came when, with Garfield's 
election to the Presidency, the fortunes of the Senate 
Democracy were made to tremble. Cameron nego- 
tiated a treaty with Mahone. The latter was to bring 
the Republicans his vote towards Senate reorganiza- 
tion. The Senate was in the hands of the Democrats. 
Mahone, for a reorganization, was to be with the Ee- 
publicans; and for that work Mahone was to name 
Riddleberger, afterwards a Senator, to be sergeant- 
at-arms. Conkling would lead the Republicans in their 
struggle for possession. 

And save for Gorman the Republicans would have 
conquered. With Mahone voting with Conkling the 
Senate would stand tie between the parties. Conkling 
and Cameron relied on Arthur as President of the Sen- 
ate to cast the vote of decision. It was Gorman who re- 
solved on objection. The other Democratic Senators 
were disposed to let the day go by default. Gorman 
urged that Arthur, as President of the Senate, could 
vote only where tie occurred on a legislative question; 
that he could not interpose where the question was 
one of Senate organization. Gorman, then young as a 
Senator, submitted this view to leading Democrats. 
They saw nothing in it. He took it to Ben Hill. The 



302 RICHARD CROKER. 

Georgian encouraged the Maryland Beaeonsfield. 
They arranged to oppose Conkling and Cameron. 

Then began a conflict which, lasting several weeks, 
was terminated by the resignations of Conkling and 
Piatt as result of quarrel with Garfield. This double 
stepping down and out left the Senate Republicans 
hamstrung; they crippled down at once and their fight 
was lost. Gorman gained fame in this melee; he 
exulted while he thought of it as a step towards the 
Presidency. 

But such is the irony of life that this triumph of 
Gorman was to have much to do in promoting that one 
of all who for years stood in Gorman's path. Over in 
Buffalo, Cleveland as Mayor had backed ignorantly 
into a contest for the right, and won. John Kelly and 
Richard Croker reached out for Buffalo's Mayor, then 
brilliant with advertisement, as a candidate for 
Governor. Civil contentions, which racked the Re- 
publicans as corollary of the Conkling-Garfield trouble, 
weighed in for Cleveland to a degree which made the 
majority by which he was elected over Folger seem 
almost foolish. And at this point, Cleveland, Governor 
at Albany, and Gorman, with his new laurels in the 
Senate, began to make one another's acquaintance. 

Gorman feared Cleveland from the first. None 
knew sooner than Gorman that the wave which bore 
Cleveland into Albany would land him high as the next 
nominee of the party for the Presidency. As this was 
secretly the Gorman ambition, it is not hard to infer 
that his heart did not yearn over Cleveland. But he 
dissembled, gave his hope a recess, and with a sigh 
turned in, in 1884, to name Cleveland, and by victory 
or defeat dispose of him and dismiss him from the 



BLAINE AND CLEVELAND. 303 

programmes of politics as soon as ever it might be 
done. 

Cleveland was nominated for the Presidency. 
Gorman, who had fame for dexterity in practical poli- 
tics, — with the face of a prelate and the heart of a 
privateersman, — was put in front of the forces of the 
party. The Republicans, however, were not disheart- 
ened by the Conkling-Garfield dissensions of the years 
before. They proposed Blaine, their best and greatest, 
and went behind their guns with the cool valor of 
buccaneers. And they all but won. 

Blaine lost New York — the White House key in 
1884 — by fewer than two thousand. And that leader 
who defeated Blaine was Gorman. The Maryland man- 
ager turned the currents in the last hours of the 
conflict. He saw the trouble; he called on Baltimore 
for money; he got it to a sum without a name. 
Thus equipped, Gorman poured that balm the wounded 
hour called for into the lower wards of New York City; 
and when the mists of doubt were blown aside success 
was his. Gorman had made Cleveland President. 

When one cannot be a king, one should be a War- 
wick. There are grace, luster, and riches in the part. 
If one cannot be the throne, be the power behind the 
throne. Gorman, after victory, made no doubt of his 
influence with Cleveland. He was the Scipio who 
had commanded success; he had fiddled it out of the 
fire; he was entitled to a White House latchkey. It 
should be his voice in the closet, his whisper on the 
backstair. 

Gorman craved three things. And they were denied. 
Cleveland refused Gorman; and was so roughly plain, 
withal, that the situation, assenting to no obligation, 



804 RICHARD CROKER. 

admitted of no hope. Gorman made no more requests. 
True to his education, Gorman was patient under in- 
sult, meek under the whip. His hates did not foam; 
his resentments were without a tongue. When friend 
or flatterer condoled, he shrugged his shoulders, spread 
his hands, talked benignantly of party welfare, and 
stood as model for the Magnanimous. He foresaw 
that Cleveland would be renamed in 1888, and as far as 
he might, and wear a dignity, he assumed to favor it. 
He busied himself for the common good. 

Cleveland was candidate a second time, and Gorman 
helped. It was Gorman, when Silver had captured the 
Committee on Eesolutions at St. Louis, and the Com- 
mittee's people were on the borders of a report de- 
claring for " Free Silver, Sixteen to One," who sat 
quietly down and talked them out of it. Smooth as 
honey, suave as cream, Gorman laid the cold finger of 
his policy on Silver's adherents, and they yielded. 
They would have rebelled against one less softly deft. 
Gorman purred them to a standstill; it was Mesmer in 
politics. 

Cleveland and defeat agreed in 1888. Long before, 
however, Gorman had begun to construct Hill. Not 
for the good of that vigorous person, but for Gorman's. 
He proposed to take New York from Cleveland with 
Hill. He worked on Hill and builded him, brick by 
brick. Hill was not strong with Tammany, he had 
cheated Croker and the organization; there was no 
pipe-line of concord or confidence between them; 
nothing but dislike. Gorman, on the other hand, while 
running the first Cleveland campaign, gained a hold 
with Tammany and Croker which few could master. 
Gorman made Hill believe that he was to follow Cleve- 



QORMAN'S STALKING HORSE. 305 

land in the White House. There was no moment when 
Gorman planned anything of the kind. Gorman pri- 
vately proposed himself for the White House; Hill was 
to be his stalking horse. 

After the defeat of the party in 1888, Gorman be- 
gan collecting power. The Force Bill came along to 
give him a lift. The mad Eepublicans all but made his 
fortunes with that measure of black sin. Gorman, fol- 
lowing 1888, saw that Cleveland was as feverishly 
for a third nomination as he had been for a first and 
second. At this, he went in with Hill more deeply; 
he double-moored New York to their ambitions, bow 
and stern; he did not leave Cleveland so much 
as a cobweb of influence with the party in his own 
State. 

To have Hill more at his whisper and beneath his 
eye, it was Gorman who told Hill to come to the 
Senate. From 1888 to 1892 it was Gorman, not Hill 
nor Cleveland, who was potent with the New York 
City Democracy. It was Gorman who invented " snap- 
perism " ; not Hill. There was the Eichelieu! " Snap- 
perism " would defeat Cleveland of his State's dele- 
gation, while it destroyed Hill with the country at 
large. Two birds, one stone! 

Propagating power wherever chance opened a way, 
it was Gorman who made Crisp Speaker in 1891. Mills 
was the Cleveland selection. Gorman brought Hill, 
Tammany, Maryland — every factor he could call his 
own — to the help of Crisp. Gorman made Crisp 
Speaker just as in 1884 he had made Cleveland Presi- 
dent. Is it not strange that Gorman can so triumph 
for others and so fail for himself? It is because Gor- 
mad has perfect courage where another takes the risk. 



306 RICHARD CROKER. 

It is when he must hazard personally the pain and 
shock of downfall that Gorman wavers. It is when 
he must go in person with the rush, and chance lance- 
thrust and saber-work, that his lips whiten, his eye 
falters, and his heart faints. It is then that he hasn't 
that sandstone courage to call down the last grand 
general charge required by success. 

There was a ludicrous incident which happened 
during Gorman's plotting for a Presidency. His tac- 
tics — and they were native with him — were to make 
the nomination seem to " seek " him. He would not 
confess himself a candidate. The Senate was a Gor- 
man hotbed; Hill had no adherents there. 

But a change was about to be forced on Gorman. 
Brice, Morgan, Cockrell, Pugh, Vest, and others of sim- 
ilar pinion, all for Gorman, all inveighing against Cleve- 
land, demanded that Gorman be announced and appear 
obviously a candidate. They insisted that he openly 
accept the situation. They argued that Hill could 
not withstand Cleveland in the country, while Gorman 
could. But they needed the Gorman consent as well 
as the Gorman name. With the mass of Senate Dem- 
ocrats the cry was: "Anything to beat Cleveland!" 
They compelled Gorman's acquiescence. To save his 
sensibilities they arranged to " force " a candidacy 
upon him; they would shove him from shore against 
his will. 

It was a well-known orator of the middle "West who 
was to launch the Gorman boom. He was not of the 
Senate. Gorman was to give a dinner in honor of this 
orator. His Senate supporters would be present. There 
was to be none not a Senator, save the guest of honor 
— who was to declare for Gorman in an impassioned 



A GORMAN DINNER. SOI 

speech, to which others would offer oratorical addenda 
full of fire — Crisp of Georgia and the Speakership, 
and Compton of Maryland. 

It was a splendid conception, with a dinner and a 
possible President in it. On the evening arranged the 
guests drew together full of appetite and hope; that 
is, all except the guest of honor. He was missing, and 
his absence spread a chill. The others waited; at last 
they sat down without him. As they battened gloomily 
and silently, a carriage drove to the Gorman gate. No 
one got out. A search party — a fashion of steering 
committee — developed the guest of honor inside, in a 
state of abstraction. The guest of honor was brought 
forth and filed away on a sofa. The banquet proceeded 
drearily. No one volunteered to make the speech of 
the unconscious one; no one demanded Gorman as a 
candidate; no Presidential plausibilities were un- 



While Gorman was chagrined at this outcome of a 
feast from which so much had been hoped, his sly 
spirit felt, with it all, not a little relieved. In silence 
he could now go forward with his sapping and his min- 
ing and his tunneling and his Hill pretenses; and that 
was more to his taste. Gorman multiplied his efforts 
to clutch the nomination. He persistently refused, 
however, to become an open candidate for convention 
favor; he never failed, to the public, to deny his ambi- 
tions in that behalf. Hunting it as game never was 
hunted before, Gorman still sought to preserve the 
appearance of a nomination hunting him. 

Gorman went to the Chicago convention of 1898, a 
full-fledged candidate, but undeclared. Hill's coming 
defeat was already apparent. Gorman's friends took 



308 RICHARD CROKER. 

with them twenty thousand Gorman badges, silk and 
gold, great and little. These were to be flaunted op- 
portunely and explode enthusiasm. They were 
drowned in Lake Michigan, and never got out of their 
boxes. 

" If the New York delegation," said Eichard Croker, 
" could have gotten away from its instructions and 
dropped Hill, we would have beaten Cleveland and 
named Gorman. But Hill insisted on the delegation 
wasting itself on him. It was Hill who nominated 
Cleveland." 

Whitney, as cunning as a Mazarin, was there for 
Cleveland; and the wide-flung sentiment of the country 
was for him. This unfortunate popular last fact be- 
came patent more and more. Someone suggested a 
quiet " count of delegates." This was three days be- 
fore the convention came together. Each State head- 
quarters was visited. There was a covert, but 
thorough, poll. It disclosed that Cleveland did not 
have the imperative two-thirds; and that Gorman was 
stronger than Hill. And still the cry was, " Anything 
to beat Cleveland! " 

It was Gorman who broke. Gorman, losing heart, 
made his decision for Cleveland. But in its first 
stage Gorman kept his Cleveland mood to himself. 
Following the " count," Gorman disappeared. No one 
found him for two days. On convention morning, 
Whitney — who was Reynard the Fox for that conven- 
tion — was out in an interview, saying that " Gorman 
was for Cleveland, always had been for Cleveland," 
and expressing amiable contempt for dullards who 
had believed anything else. Contemporaneously Gor- 
man appeared at Whitney's elbow, pegging away for 



GOUMAN IS ORSAf. 309 

the ex-President. Cleveland was named on the first 
ballot, with Hill sticking to the end. 

Gorman, in his way, at sightless midnight and by the 
left hand, is great. He has done wonders of politics 
and legislation of the fog and spun-glass kind. How 
does Gorman work these marvels? By a craft like unto 
that of Mephistopheles; by a talent for diagonalism— a 
genius of the indirect; by a faultless capacity for mak- 
ing one believe that one's own best interest lies the 
Gorman way. Gorman is weak and wonderful at once. 
Gorman is as the vampire bat, which, wanting strength 
and courage and power for war, still inhabits ■ earth 
and air and night and day, sucking gentle blood with 
safe indifference from lion and from lamb alike. 



XVIII. 

BRYAN AND A PRESIDENCY. 

Be brave then ; 

For your captain is brave, and vows reformation. 
There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for a penny. 
The three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops, 
And I will make it felony to drink small beer, 

All the realm shall be in common, and in Cheapside shall my palfrey 
go to grass. 

—Jack Cade. 



There are more good lives lived than written, com- 
plains Carlyle in effect, and then goes forward to be- 
labor a German person of bad luck who has offended 
him with an unhappy biography of Jean Paul Bichter. 
What Carlyle writes is highly the truth. The Scot 
might have pushed forward another rood or two and 
said that, compared with lives as lived, no good life 
will nor ever can be written. What is here set forth 
is not in defense of the present, which, making no 
pretense to a granite gravity, is a study, rather than 
a story, of Eichard Croker. But to take up again the 
crabbed line laid down by Carlyle: It does not conform 
with the possible that between the charged and 
crowded covers of a book aught liberally better than 
glimpses of an individual is to be obtained. If one's 
whole true life were printed down, with all one felt 
and meant and lost and won and did and failed to do, 
each day would claim a volume to its record. Every 
sigh would own its paragraph, every tear take up a 
chapter in its telling. 

310 



JEAN PAUL RICHTER. 311 

Johnson once said, in an earlier day of that worthy's 
siege of his society, that did he believe Boswell in- 
tended to write his Life, he would assuredly prevent 
the outrage by taking Boswell's. The dour Carlyle 
almost laughs at this, and intimates some aid to 
biographic literature had great men acted on Johnson's 
epigram and butchered their historians before the lat- 
ter got to work. Carlyle selected his own Life-writer, 
and gave to Froude, in advance of his demise, what- 
ever of those bricks and mortar he would want as ma- 
terial for his building. And at that, it's to be mis- 
doubted if Carlyle would not wring his hands in a 
very protest of agony, were he here to regard and pass 
upon the finished work. 

In his assaults on the criminal German aforesaid, 
assaults which were to be the excuse for himself writ- 
ing a sketch of Eichter, Carlyle set forth with fine, 
though inferential, scorn the method which the 
caitiff Rhinelander, telling of Richter, pursued. From 
some Index of Great Names he culled the date of 
Eichter's birth, and from the newspapers fixed his 
death. Then he fought through ranks and double 
ranks of books, and clipped unsparingly each para- 
graph which carried Eichter's name or made a least of 
reference to him. These were then jumbled together 
in a hodgepodge of glomerate confusion, to have that 
place in literature which in architecture is occupied by 
Stonehenge. The German has no notion of per- 
spective, and grants space equal and alike to a two- 
weeks' jaunt into the country and a sickness of fifteen 
years. Also, he is abrupt in his transitions, and in a 
paragraph confers on Eichter a wife and a trio of 
weans. In the next, or nearly the next, Eichter dies; a 



312 RICHARD CROKER. 

sentence gapes unexpectedly beneath him like a trap 
door in the '' Vision of Mirza," and Eichter is gone. 
Only for the moment, however; like Harlequin in the 
pantomimes, he but descends beneath the stage to re- 
turn plungingly through a clock-face the moment 
after. Carlyle does not like this, and fingers the poor 
German with epithetical severity. 

It is by no means sure that the scheme followed by 
the German, and over which Carlyle pouts so ran- 
corously, would not produce a sterling story of its 
man. Once I looked over a " Life of Jesus Christ," 
constructed by Thomas Jefferson on precisely that 
plan of clip-and-paste. It was made of excerpts from 
the literature of a half score of countries, and dis- 
played the Galilean in English, French, German, 
Spanish, Italian, Russian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and 
Arabic. By those who could read it, the word was 
unanimous that this mosaic of Jefferson's offered the 
best biography of the Saviour yet extant. And there 
wasn't an original line by Jefferson. 

Carlyle in his grumblings is not to be minded too 
much. Carlyle was an oak tree with the stomach ache. 
There was something innately wrong with Carlyle and 
his machinery, for he lived to be eighty-six and still 
never witnessed a day pain-free and whole in its hap- 
piness. His capacity for gloomy contradiction appears 
in his daily forebodes of nearing death. Ever dying in 
thought, he lives on and on, full sixteen years beyond 
the given limit. 

And Carlyle might have been more cheerful. Bi- 
ography, for all he says, becomes better — or has during 
the last century — much faster than the individual. 
When the progress of humanity is considered, it does 



FOUR HUNDRED YEARS. 313 

not impress one by its extent. Steam? and telegraph? 
and telephone? say you. That is not progress, it's dis- 
covery. Or should you insist, call it a progress of the 
physical. In astronomy, geology, electricity, mechan- 
ics, chemistry, medicine — arenas of discovery these — 
we have progressed. But on the moral-mental side — the 
side of ethics and of the abstract — we have ever been 
much at a stop. The mental-moral eye is dim; the 
bodily vision keen; daily we discern more and still more 
of the physical, though little, if any more, of the 
psychical. 

How long is it since man first tried to pick the lock 
of futurity and make purchase of the tales to come? 
And yet after centuries of peering, spying, and fore- 
seeing, one can't certainly foretell one's own story for 
those sixty seconds next beyond. One knows no more 
of God, nor is one nearer God, than were those other 
ones an age of eons gone. Is the finite to know the 
Infinite, and is a foot-rule to measure space? And our 
theology is not more sure than was that of our slant- 
skulled forefather who went clothed of a sheepskin 
and a club, ate his meat raw, and saved his fire to 
pray to. 

Seize on the last four hundred years; compare the 
progress of the physical with the march — if march 
there has been, and not a stolid squatting on its 
haunches — of the moral-mental. Give a short regard 
to medicine, an ensample of the physical, and measure 
its oncomings. 

" If to-day " — said a New York City physician, of 
abundant patients and sufficient fame — " if to-day I 
were to practice my profession as I did a score of years 
ago, I would be Jailed for malpractice. And a score 



314 RICHARD CROKER. 

of years ago had I practiced my profession as I do to- 
day, I'd have been jailed for malpractice. So much 
has the world of surgery and medicine turned over in 
twenty years." 

Consider what is done with drugs, and temperatures, 
and surgeons' knives and needles and antiseptics. 
Compare the present with remedies sovereign in the 
time of that great Galenist, Gervase Markham, who 
was in his pride three centuries ago. His was a prac- 
tice wherein folk drank sand in wine for dyspepsia 
and called it " pebble posset." The Water of Life, 
which if one took " he might walk safely from danger 
by the leave of God," was compounded of twenty-nine 
garden herbs, to which were added " a fleshy running 
capon, the loins and legs of an old coney, the red 
flesh of the sinews of a leg of mutton, four young 
chickens, twelve larks, the yolks of twelve eggs, and a 
loaf of white sugar all to be distilled in white wine." 
A powder of pearls, amber, and coral was given for 
consumption; while others, for the same malad}^ pre- 
ferred " cock-water, the cock being to be chased or 
beaten before he was killed, or else plucked alive," and 
then distilled. A cordial based on garden snails and 
earthworms, " about a peck," was used for dropsy; 
and aches of the sinews and griefs by sprains were re- 
duced with " oil of swallows " obtained " by pounding 
twenty live swallows in a mortar," with as many roots. 
For epilepsy " a mole . . . dried in an oven whole 
as taken out of the earth and administered as a pow- 
der " was the remedy; deafness gave way before an oil, 
the result of " a grey eel with a white belly inclosed 
in an earthen pot " and buried alive for fourteen days. 
" For a stitch in the side," prescribed the scientific 




Grover Cleveland. 



QERVASE MARKHAM. 315 

Markham, one might " look when you see a swine rub 
himself, and there upon the same place rub a slick- 
stone, and then with it slick all the swelling and it will 
cure it." Caesar was bald and bewailed it. The con- 
queror might have grown hair like a Sutherland had 
he but fallen in with Markham, and learned that all 
one had to do was grease one's depilitated poll with an 
ointment conf ected of " garden snails plucked out of 
their houses and pounded with horse-leeches, bees, 
wasps, and salt an equal quantity of each " ; or, if that 
were not to please him, then a potent hair balm might 
be gained by " droAvning in a pint of wine as many 
green frogs as it will cover, setting the pot forty days 
in the sun." Such was medicine in a day of Shaks- 
pere. Lay it by the side of present practice and de- 
cide how far we've come. 

And, having done so much for physical progress, 
place beside Bacon, Ealeigh, Sidney, Shakspere, Beau- 
mont, Lyly, Spenser, Jonson, and More, the best 
thought of poet, moralist, publicist, and philosopher 
of now, and show wherein the moral-mental has ad- 
vanced. Since the Roman builded Watling Street, 
and the Saxon inhabitants of Britain, with bodies 
hand-painted a beauteous blue with the dyes of woad, 
stood watching, the race ihas traveled far in the 
sciences of communication, transportation, and dress. 
Also, the Atlantic liners are a great tree to grow from 
such an acorn as that pitched and wattled coble, big 
enough for one, of coastwise England, ago two thou- 
sand years. Those are great strides; but they mark 
nothing save a progress of the physical. Not that one 
grieves thereat. One is simply trying to reach a fact, 
not find a fault. The physical is first, the moral- 



316 RICHARD CROKER. 

mental second; if we cannot progress on both lines, 
but only one, then, for comfort and the race's sake, 
let it be as it is — the physical. 

Do you say our laws and schemes of government have 
progressed? And now we've but added another to im- 
provements physical. Our laws, which are but the 
uttered detail of our government, were, in abstract, 
thought and talked and written and dwelt upon in. 
every age of which we know the story. The theory of 
a republic is as old as the hills; indeed, there have been 
ever republics back, back, back in the dimmest dis- 
tances of time. It is only the practice that with us is 
new. And whatever of progress is told by it, like medi- 
cine, like railroads, like boat-bulding, it is a progress 
of the physical. Improvement in law — a betterment 
of government — does not declare a moral or mental 
advancement. There exists ever a tacit resistance to 
oppression, and the birth of a republic means no more 
— even though it be the better government — than that 
through some accident of crowned weakness, or may- 
hap some power of geography, as was the case in our 
own Revolution, the republicans asserted, conquered, 
and afterwards sustained themselves. England and 
Germany are monarchies; France and America repub- 
lics. Yet it would be difficult to show, speaking of 
the mental-moral, wherein the standards of the two 
latter are higher than those of the others. Mexico is a 
republic; and in thought, morals, and the spiritual, 
she cannot contest with those monarchies named. 
And Germany comes almost to be a tyranny at that. 

Take the immorality of drunkenness. Folk are as 
drunken now as in the time of Hengist. Alcohol is 
ever suicide, partial or complete as one drinks less or 



THE MORAL STAGNATION. 317 

more. No one doubts this; least of all the one who 
sells and he who buys and drinks the poison. We make 
laws thereat; but one may not uproot a habit with a 
rule nor fell a tree of appetite with any ax of statute. 
There is, in an item of drunkenness, no progress of the 
moral-ethical. Nor is there like to be. It is the 
age of avarice; of commercialism and a mania of 
money. Where there are a buyer and a profit, there also 
will be a seller and a sale. And so the traffic in hell- 
water goes on; and its litter — whereof the pedigree 
should read, " out of Alcohol, by Apollyon " — of crime 
and misery and degeneracy, is daily brought forth in 
our midst. Does such promise a progress of the moral? 
"Wine makes a man pleased with himself, which is 
no small matter," said Johnson to Boswell, as the 
two defended tippling. Johnson was a false donkey; 
he might have said as much of insanity in more than 
three-fourths of its expression. 

What is the trouble? It is the hour of commercial- 
ism, an age benumbed of commerce. Deadly to the 
moral-mental withal, it is still no mark of genius, and 
hardly one of commonest wit, this making of huge 
money. Such feats of riches come rather from a red- 
squirrel bent to hoard. The red squirrel, with a 
brain not to fill a thimble, will hoard you away each 
autumn enough of nuts to save a dozen red squirrels 
through a dozen winters. The wolf, sagacious, strong, 
and a menace, too, lays nothing by; he pulls down each 
day's beef each day. And yet is the red squirrel wiser 
than the wolf because of a bushel of acorns? 

Commercialism sways the scepter, and your modern 
Alexander is the " business man." How may one know 
him? By his coarse complacency of face, with its 



318 RICHARD CROKER. 

prim trimmed beard of mutton-chop; by a spirit like 
unto the spirit of pork; by a soul the height of his 
counter. There is the Produce Exchange — a body of 
immortal hucksters; there is the Stock Exchange — a 
body of immortal gamesters; there is the Chamber of 
Commerce — a body of immortal Tories, who give 
Anglican dinners and drink " God save the King " ; 
these be all, all " business men." The term " business 
man " is become a first potency in education, theology, 
politics, society, where you will. All must hear, and 
all obey the " business man." It is decidedly a Dog- 
berry instance of " when I do ope my mouth let no 
dogs bark." 

There is but one fellow to the " business man." In 
the Eastern Faraway lies dreamy India ; hot, dark-eyed, 
and inert. The native is timid and retreatingly weak. 
His courage is as dusky as his skin. In the groves 
about the native villages dwell colonies of grave gray 
apes. They come whence and go whither they list; 
they enter the huts of the villagers and help them- 
selves. They take as they please; and no Hindoo may 
club nor chide, nor thwart them, nor call to see the color 
of their apeships' money, for, lo! these apes be sacred. 
These are the " business men " of India; and they bear 
resemblance to their brothers over-seas. Commercial- 
ism and the " business man " are foes to enthusiasm, 
to imagination, to art, to poetry, to literature, to every- 
thing but commerce. They dam all streams save 
streams of trade. They make a commodity of the 
sensibilities, and feel gratitude by the gallon, and are 
torn with love by the yard. 

One shudders to remember what a critic will say 
who has read this work thus far. One may hear him 



THE FE Alt SOME CRITIC. 31 9 

curse behind his beard and demand what have these 
meanderings to do with the story of Richard Croker? 
Let him growl and grind. When one goes grouse- 
shooting, one goes for the feel of the grass underfoot, 
the quick taste of the air, the greenery of the woods, 
the tree-talk of bough against bough overhead, the 
blue of the sky, the bosk and the gum-smells of the 
thickets, the lipping and chafing of the brook against 
its banks, as much as ever one goes for grouse. And 
what care we for critics! What is a critic? A critic 
is he who finds fault with you for doing something he 
could not do in a way he would not do it if he could. 
Am I clear? "Clear as mud," say you. Thanks! my 
spirit wraps itself in your assurances as in the very 
silks and satins of satisfaction. One is safe who holds 
of critics as Sterne wrote of them. 

" ' Their heads, sir ' — quoth the author of "Uncle 
Toby — ' their heads, sir, are stuck so full of rules and 
compasses, and have that eternal propensity to apply 
them on all occasions, that a work of genius had better 
go to the devil at once, than stand to be prick'd and 
tortured to death by 'em.' 

" ' And how did Garriek speak the soliloquy last 
night? ' 

" ' Oh, against all rule, my lord — most ungrammati- 
cally betwixt substantive and the adjective, which 
should agree together in number, case, and gender, 
he made a breach, thus — stopping as if the point 
wanted settling; — and betwixt the nominative case, 
which your lordship knows should govern the verb, he 
suspended his voice in the epilogue a dozen times, 
three seconds and three-fifths by a stop-watch, my 
lord, each time.' 



320 niCMAttD CROKEB. 

" * Admirable grammai-ian! . . . Was the eye 
silent? Did you look?' 

" ' I looked only at the stop-watch, my lord.' 

" ' Excellent observer! And what of this new 
book?' 

" * Oh, 'tis out of all plumb, my lord, — quite an 
irregular thing! — not one of the angles of the four 
corners was a right angle. I had my rule and com- 
passes, my lord, in my pocket.' 

"'Excellent critick! . . . Grant me patience, 
oh. Heaven! — Of all the cants which are canted in this 
canting world — though the cant of hypocrites may be 
worst — the cant of criticism is the most tormenting! 
I would go fifty miles on foot, for I have not a horse 
worth riding on, to kiss the hand of that man whose 
generous heart will give up the reins of his imagina- 
tion into his author's hands — be pleased he knows not 
why, and cares he knows not wherefore.' " 

What is the balking trouble with this chapter? 
Why does it not get on? or why refuse a destiny and 
avoid its work? Wherefore does it dawdle, and delay, 
and wax vociferous over nothings like some hare-brain 
canine barking at a knot? The key to the entire 
worry lies in the fact that my intelligence isn't halter- 
broken; it won't lead. 

When I sat me down on the doorsill of this chapter 
I first had Bryan in my mind. Then my thoughts 
took unexpected wing and covered what of this chap- 
ter has already gone before. Then my conjecturings 
turned again to Bryan; only for a moment. From the 
Nebraskan they roved to Hill — Hill who was sedulous 
to hide his light beneath a bushel of jealousy in 1896, 
to let it shine again in 1900 because reflection 



SOME HILL THOUGBTS. 321 

warned him that he was but four years distant from 
1904. 

Next, my idle thoughts began to circle and sail above 
Hill's lack of gratitude to Croker, and the eyeless, 
bat-like characteristics thus betrayed. Croker gave Hill 
his nomination for Governor, and then gave him his 
majority at the polls. And yet from the day Croker 
made of him a Governor, Hill did what he privately 
might to discourage, divide, and disperse the power of 
Croker and break down Tammany Hall. This was 
green and hateful ingratitude; and with nothing for 
its parent save a cheap envy of Croker — for no in- 
terests, political, or otherwise, of Croker and Hill 
could have possible collision — it had, as a sentiment, 
no least sustenance of common sense. Also it pointed 
the poor judgment of Hill. Had he been skill- 
ful of men, he would have known the formidable 
character of Croker, and passed him by with his in- 
trigues. Croker made Hill Governor; later he sent 
him to the Senate; and one may suspect for no other 
reason than, as much as he might, to be rid of Hill in 
New York. 

Thus, I say, did the eddies of my thought swirl touch- 
ing Hill. Then, of a sudden, they slipped away anew; 
they deserted the contemplation of Hill's fatuous in- 
gratitude, to reflect on his personal appearance. My 
thoughts dwelt, I recall, on Hill's mustache and scheme 
of face as shown in his shaving. Then they moved to a 
general survey of faces and beards, and with the coun- 
sel of experience made wondrous deduction. My 
thoughts — they had won beyond any rule of mine — in- 
sisted that the manner of one's beard, and the clip 
and style of one's apparel, were signboards of char- 



322 niCHABD CROKEH. 

acter; that externals told the story of internals, and 
garb and make-up were outward indications of an 
inner man. Do you discover a gentleman with a 
red hat-band? Be sure there is another inside of his 
head. Are his clothes extravagant of color, kind, or 
cut? Some garish excess that lives within is pointed 
to. Are garments slop-shop, and trousers of ill fit? 
They prove the soul inside to be a sloven, and tell of 
morals baggy at the knee. 

And next my rambling cogitations picked up this 
subject of beards again. They whirled and tossed it 
for their own amusement. There are but two human 
faces in Nature; one is smooth and one is full of 
beard. When one, with shears and blade, betakes one's 
self to an improvement — for so one deems it — of one's 
natural visage, results will ever speak the secret of 
one's self. The full beard betokens manhood, honesty, 
simplicity, and withal an uncleanness that misfits with 
modern times. Given manhood, honesty, and sim- 
plicity; with a white fineness of fiber added, the man 
mows his whole face smooth. The mustache has 
manhood and a spirit to be military behind it. The 
mustache was born of a day of armor when helmets 
denied accommodation to the beard. It is the disaster 
of the mustache that it is common behind every rum 
counter of the land. Your mustache, found in convoy 
of a full, long, and abundant sidewhisker, argues a 
weakling vanity, no stubbornness of manhood, and a 
fervor for the feminine which is never deeply returned. 
Those little broom-beards to cover the chin, while the 
cheeks are shaved, when linked with a mustache, 
promise selfishness, craft, cunning, and no fine loyalty 
to friend or principle. It is the instinct of conceal- 



BEARDS AND THEIR STORIES. 323 

ment which frames and cultivates this beard; it is an 
ambush behind which the wearer's words may lurk 
and hide. The broom-beard, unaccompanied of the 
mustache, proves a steady, pains-taking avarice which 
will follow a dollar to the prison door. There it will 
pause. The broom-beard of either kind recounted is 
never worn save by folk of commonest clay — it voices 
an unfineness. Its wearers, however, will generally 
be " respectable," because they will always be discreet. 
The business " mutton chop " has had a prior mention, 
and there need be here no addenda to former words 
thereon. Then there is the fop's face, which finds 
assertion in the tenderly clipped Van Dyke, or else 
those wee, waxed mustaches to go with the heroes of 
hectic romance. One might write days without end 
on beards. Those imitative beards, snipped in patterns 
of a Prince of Wales; or those mustaches, turned up 
and flanged like a buzzard's wing because a Kaiser does 
it, would keep one's pencil to the laborous tread- 
mill of a month in descant on that sterile brain which 
prompts them. It was thus my thoughts gamboled and 
rioted, and would not be driven in the legitimate 
service of this book. 

Following the settlement of all things earthly con- 
cerning beards and raiment, my conjecturings next 
gave way to a half-melancholy doubt. They re- 
proached me with a willingness to lay a too-much im- 
portance on outward signs and symbols. As though 
they, my vagrant thoughts, were not the ones guilty, 
and had not done the whole without consulting me I 
They warned me not to repose in judgment on a bare 
appearance. They spoke of whited sepulchers; and 
even recalled me to that beautiful trumpet flower of 



324 mCHARD CROKER. 

the tropics that closes on, imprisons, and devours by 
ghoulish suction the humming bird which visits within 
its vampire cup. I must not, said my thoughts, — which 
having renounced my guardianship of them, were 
now to pose as guardian to me, — I must not let simple 
appearance carry me too far. My theory of a story 
told by looks was an inantherate; abortive, sterile, 
with no chance of a descendant honest child. My 
thoughts went so far as to attaint me of a point of 
view. You are disturbed and discouraged by a gorilla, 
and do not like his looks, said my thoughts. And yet 
that is because of your point of view. Without ques- 
tion your gorilla is a fine character, if taken purely on 
a jungle basis. One never hears of your gorilla 
swindling and cheating and oppressing his fellow 
gorillas. Also, he exhibits his gothic manhood when 
after supper he sends his wife and children into the 
topmost branches of the ancestral tree to pass the 
night in safety, while he with his club slumbers 
doughtily at the foot, ready for any or all who shall 
threaten his household. 

Next, my thoughts declared that no one may make 
a rule which will fit mankind. Humanity, if crack 
and crevice go no further, at least parts into a duo 
of classes, just as do animals; one being wild and the 
other domestic. There are, urged my thoughts, people 
of two kinds, the sheep people and the wolf people. 
One class drifts in flocks and lives in comfort; it is first 
sheared, and then eaten, and always owned. The wild 
or wolf class lives hard and free; its member dies de- 
fiantly and alone, none knows when nor how nor where; 
and no one owns him. With such a variance in the 
plain natures of men, it is the limit of risk, so said my 



FOLLOWING KELLY. 326 

thoughts, to attempt conclusions as to Jones because 
of discoveries touching Brown. One might be wolf, 
and the other sheep; one a flesh-eater while the other 
dined on grass; one be a slayer and the other a slain. 

And this while, mind you! I was trying to coax my 
errant intelligence, together with its thought-foals, 
into the harness, to the end that these pages be right- 
fully plowed and planted. My thoughts seemed to 
weary down a bit following that hyperbole of wolf- 
and-sheep, and I all but had them by the forelocks. 
And, indeed, it was not long thereafter when I did 
squarely herd them into the fence-corner of a fact or 
two, and effect their capture. Probably I will have 
blame for this mental runaway. I ought not; I 
couldn't prevent it. The disaster wasn't even pre- 
ventable. Good folk, honest folk, will exonerate me 
in the business. Only madmen and " reformers " de- 
mand the impossible and abuse one when it isn't 
produced. 

When Richard Croker was given charge of Tammany 
Hall following Kelly, not a member of the organiza- 
tion held an office. Tammany was " out " in the 
absolute sense of the word; the dominant powers of the 
party (local) were inimical to the Tiger's people. Croker 
met this opposition with conciliation. And beneath 
the conciliation dwelt a sure cunning. Croker's first 
move was a surprise. He got up one early morning 
and named the best man of his opponents to be the 
head of the Tammany ticket. This action shook up 
the faculties of the enemy; it amazed* and dismayed 
him. In four years Croker, by arts of conciliation 
backed by a velvet force, had brought the dis- 
cordant elements of the Democracy together under 



326 BICHARD CROKER. 

one banner — the banner of Tammany Hall. The 
Irving Hall and the County Democracies, and what 
others there were, disappeared; exhaled beneath the 
rays of Croker's rising policy and were taken up and 
absorbed by the older organization. Under Croker's 
chiefship the Democracy carried for eight years the 
city and did not lose it once. The first stumble was 
in 1894; Tammany was routed and its enemies had 
possession of the town. The year before this disaster, 
however, Croker had laid down his leadership and re- 
tired to quieter fields. Not for a quartette of years — 
not until 1897 — did Croker resume any active Tam- 
many command. 

Cleveland went to the White House for the second 
time in 1892. For the four ensuing years, had he been 
guided to his work by the very demon of the Republi- 
cans, he could not have more completely wrought the 
dismemberment of the Democracy. At the close of 
his term the national convention of the party, repre- 
senting in its vast majority a hatred of Cleveland and 
all his ways, gathered itself together. In this con- 
vention there were no managers, for the party had 
cast off those who, in the traditions of politics, should 
have been its captains. 

It was at this moment that the star of AVilliam 
Jennings Bryan showed over the horizon, and began 
to climb and burn in the party heavens, Bryan was 
chosen by the almost unanimous voice of this conven- 
tion to lead in the campaign for a Presidency. Bryan 
created himself with a speech. Hill, too, had gone to 
the convention with a harangue in his pocket and a 
hanker in his heart. But Hill, with a usual infelicity, 
maneuvered himself into early disrepute; his chance, if 



WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN. 327 

he had one, was lost. Bryan, more dexterous, and the 
abler, better man, succeeded. Bryan also had his 
oration and he delivered it. The convention was in- 
flammable. Bryan touched it with the torch of his 
" Crown of Thorns " and " Cross of Gold," and for 
reward was fairly conflagrated into nomination. 

It is worth observe that those who now read Bryan's 
speech on that fire-swept occasion wonder at its tame- 
ness and fustian character of commonplace. Amaze- 
ment arouses, and asks how an effort, so obviously 
mediocre, could so blaze in its results. The answer is 
ready and valid enough. Oratory is of the audience 
rather than the orator. Take a cold bar of iron. Lay 
it on an anvil, and smite it — hammer it as you will. 
The off-come is clamor — a clangorous horror of up- 
roar. But heat the bar white-hot. Lay it again on 
that same anvil, and with the same hammer strike that 
selfsame blow. Instead of clangor, the result beautiful 
is a fire-shower. And on the hot and spitting iron re- 
mains the deep mark of your effort. And so with 
oratory; with the bar as audience while the hammer 
is the speech. And so with Bryan and that Presi- 
dential nomination. It was your pat occasion when 
man and hour meet. The convention was at white- 
heat. Bryan laid it on the anvil of opportunity; struck 
it with the hammer of his rhetoric, and the rest is 
known to all. And yet, as said before, it was the 
audience, not the orator, that furnished the eloquence. 

Bryan's career, impossible in any other land, offers 
all that is sharp, ardent, and eventful. Bryan began 
his public work in 1891; five years later six and one- 
half millions of voters sought at the ballot-box to 
make him president. During the Fifty-second Con- 



328 RICHARD CROKER. 

gress the tariff affairs of the Democracy went stagger- 
ing. The " popgun " bills that Springer framed had 
neither dignity nor tone. They were sneered at by 
Democrats a»d scoffed at by Kepublicans in every 
high and open place. It was not iintil Bryan made 
his first tariff speech in the House that the Democracy 
took heart and regarded life worth living. On this 
tariff occasion the Kepublicans, with the cynical Keed, 
were there to carp, and say sharp things, and ask sharp 
questions, and make evil interruptions. One after 
another the orators of the Democracy, some of them 
old in conflict of the forum, were riddled by Eeed's 
sarcasm and made to fly. Crisp, in the chair, 
was in despair. At last, Bryan was sent into the thick 
of House storm. He came with the advantages of a 
musical voice, a bright eye, and a pleasing personality. 
Nor did he talk long before he developed that he was 
not alone fair of his English, but had therewith such 
command of the subject as belongs only to ones who 
have burned the lights of studious preparation. 
Bryan's speech was the event of the session. Every 
thrust of Reed was parried; every blow was stopped 
and countered. Time and again the " Big Man from 
Maine " was made to draw back, discomfiture in his 
face, while the House howled. For a new man — a 
young man, one who had not talked five minutes in 
the House before — the feat was as a feat of wizards. 
At the close. Crisp and the fathers of the forum con- 
gratulated Bryan; and even opponents, while disa- 
greeing, came across and shook him by the hand. That 
speech saved the House Democracy, and fixed forever 
Bryan's standing as a master of forensic fence. What 
was to be applauded most was the stability of the man; 



BRYAN'S RECORD. 329 

no more to be stampeded than a stone wall; no more 
to be put to flight than a tree. In the Fifty-second 
and the Fifty-third Congresses Bryan was in the fore- 
front of party movement. In his second Congress, 
while still a member of the Ways and Means, with 
Wilson at the head, he not only made the leading 
speech for the Wilson bill, but a speech so elaborately 
complete for Silver, that Culbertson of Texas, himself 
the gray, wise Nestor of the House, said: " That 
exhausts the subject. It's the best possible setting 
forth that the cause of Silver can have." During his 
Congressional life Bryan led up the forces for low 
tariff. Silver, fought to repeal the National Bank acts, 
and consistently aided Hatch to pass his Anti-Option. 
On appropriations Bryan was against extravagance 
and lived the persistent champion of economy. With 
his own people he was always a leader, and the Nebraska 
Senators came often to the House to gain his views. 
Bryan was a Presbyterian in religion. He was fre- 
quently in the pulpit as a lecturer. Politically, he 
refused no call to speak. He once addressed a con- 
course of preachers, and then talked politics from a 
rum-shop bar on the same day. When the house held 
a Sunday session, Bryan left his seat for an hour to 
lecture on the divinity of Christ in a church on Capitol 
Hill. Bryan in habit was decorous and well within 
the moral line. He had no redeeming vices. Bryan 
prepared a speech with care. He wrote it, pruned, 
pared, and rehearsed it. He said once that he would 
no more speak without preparation than he'd plunge 
wingless into an abyss. Bryan's life was quiet, except 
so far as he disturbed it with pilgrimages of politics. 
He had no circle of friends, made and received no 



330 RICHARD CROEER. 

social visits. He was in no sense a lady's man. He 
was not a rose of society. In dress Bryan could not 
have been called a fop. Neither would he have excited 
the cartoonist with any Greeleyan degeneracies of rai- 
ment. His garb was modest and of dark reserve. Bryan 
would have won no notice for the clothes he wore. 
In epitome, Bryan was the West. His life was simple; 
he made up existence meeting men, reading books, 
making speeches to further his political ends. Bryan 
served two terms in Congress without a mark to his 
discredit; and failed of re-election through an over-pro- 
duction of Cleveland. He was not a Mugwump, not a 
Populist; but a Democrat who got his inspirations in 
a party past. No one need blush for Bryan. He was 
as good a Democrat and as true an American as any 
who ever bought a bond or owned a bank. Bryan was 
in person of middle height, strongly and stockily built. 
His shoulders were broad enough to excite the approval 
of a wrestler; his chest was as deep as that of a race 
horse. Nor was he overabundant about the waist. He 
looked what he was — a man of health and perfect 
physical power. Mounted on Bryan's square shoulders 
was a square head. His hair, black and recalcitrant 
rather than docile, defied brush and comb, and tumbled 
and tossed with a spirit of its own. This wayward 
black hair, coarse as a pony's, would have given Brj^an 
a shaggy effect were it not for the relief he brought 
the situation by completely shaving his face. No 
beard, no mustache, had the freedom of Bryan's 
countenance. Every trace was mowed away with the 
light of each new day, and when the world saw him, 
he was as smooth as a curate. There was nothing soft, 
nor yielding, nor effeminate in Bryan; nothing of the 



BRYAN'S CHARACTER. 331 

flower. His eye was dark, his complexion swarthy, with 
the British, not the Spanish, swarthiness; his nose an 
eagle curve, his mouth well widened and firm, and the 
whole based on a jaw, the seat of strength, and 
as square-hewn as if cut from Devon rock. Bryan's 
instinct was conservative. He went not easily to the 
new. Like all well-balanced, well-built men, Bryan 
was a creature of his environment. He was for a low 
tariff; yes. He was for free silver; yes. Because they 
were as naturally a Western product of principle as 
was corn a natural product of the soil. There would 
be neither truth nor justice in picturing Bryan as some 
Danton, or some Robespierre, the apostle of disorder, 
bound to cast all into chaos and then cement chaos 
with blood. Bryan was not of that school. He was 
wise, faithful to a trust, honest with the probity of the 
sun, morally as well as physically brave, and as much 
the patriot as any. It skills not, aids not, yields noth- 
ing to the safety nor glory of the gold or any cause to 
belie this man. Give him his due, and tell of him the 
truth, as one would had he come from the East instead 
of the West, and been able to show a railroad or a 
bank in his pedigree. His honesty, his patriotism, 
were not to be impugned. What he asked for was 
proper subject of debate, and perchance refusal; but the 
man himself was no more to be corroded than gold, no 
more corruptible than a diamond. Personally, Bryan 
charmed all who approached him. None who knew 
him refused him respect. Bryan was of the old party, 
and in him the careful searcher would have found a 
renaissance of the anci&nt Democracy. It was excel- 
lently in Bryan's favor that he was founded on him- 
self. No coterie controlled him. All there was of 



332 RICHARD CROKER. 

Bryan was Bryan. Bryan was what folk call "mag- 
netic." Men liked him. He was pleasant to the eye, 
to the ear, and soothed by his presence and never 
troubled. No man saw him in a passion. He was cool 
and of a cautious temper. No flush of irritation red- 
dened his cheek. He was of poise; and his emotions 
sat steadily, as became those of one who, with care 
for himself, ate thrice a day, laughed at dyspepsia, 
and slept soundly of nights. Bryan was well, even 
highly, educated. He had quarried books and tunneled 
learning with any musty professor of them all. More 
than books, he had studied men, and their lives were 
his lessons. He had a memory like unto wax, and 
what he heard or read or saw remained with him. 
Bryan was not so profound as quick; and with an in- 
tellect, rather military than philosophical, he made 
weapons of all he knew, and every scrap of learning 
belonging to him was at hand to be defensive or 
offensive, as his swift aptitude for combat might de- 
cide. It is not too much to say of Bryan that the 
arena of politics presented no one of that day who, 
with fuller information, more pleasing address, more 
ready eloquence, and a quicker wit, could cope with 
and overcome him. Bryan was these things excellent. 
Also, Bryan was defeated, which is not so good. Bryan, 
in 1896, should have won. He was beaten by a lack 
of party discipline; by a plentiful want of wisdom at 
the headquarters of party. There was too much of the 
camp meeting, too little of the military, in Democratic 
management. Like a mob the party went to the elec- 
tion; like a mob it was met and routed. 



XIX. 

THE REFORMERS. 

One might live without raiment, and live without food ; 

And live without evil, and live without good. 

One might live without laughing, and live without sighing— 

One almost had said, one might live without dying — 

But who is the man who could live without lying? 

— Queries of the Practical. 

Let us go backward a pace. Cleveland, following 
1892, directly and indirectly fomented Mugwumpery 
and anti-Democracy in the City of New York. In a 
personal sense, at least, your fault-finder should not 
for this tilt with Cleveland and break lance of wrath 
against him. Cleveland for that second White House 
owed nothing to Tammany Hall. Wherefore, always 
sour, ever personal, and never generous in either a 
spirit of party or of public, Cleveland strove his dead- 
liest towards the destruction of Tammany and the New 
York City Democracy as then was. 

There is an element of politics, self-styled " reform." 
It is opulent of numbers in this town. Its leadership 
is much in the fingers of a parcel of outcasts of all 
parties and politics, and a ranting circle of dominies, 
crazy of notoriety. These trouble-makers, under the 
warmth of Cleveland's favor — for he coddled them as 
ones hateful of Tammany — began to stir and swell. 
Also, in the accident of general feeling, the town met 
your " reformers " halfway, — the grain stood ready 
nodding to their sickles of lunacy and disappointment. 
m 



334 RICHARD CROKER. 

The town was eager of " reform." That is, the public, 
never careful of its nomenclature, called it " reform." 

This sudden gush of goodness on a people's part is 
a phenomenon frequent enough. Like those trade 
cataclysms termed " business panics," it will fall out 
about five or six times in a century. Both are seasons 
of hysteria; one of commerce, the other of morals. 
It chanced to this town as a community to have moral 
hysteria in 1894. And being of this regenerate temper 
— a temper which, to the discouragement of theories 
as to an immediate near millennium, never lasts — the 
public, as stated, met the " reformers " halfway. 

To you who for any purpose may be a student of 
communities, here is a sentence of advice: When a 
town demands " reform," it does not mean reform. 
It has only bungled with a term. It does not yearn 
for moral change; it desires, rather, some mitigation 
of immoral expression. It objects to refuse in the 
street; privily, it does not object to refuse in the back 
alley, where it never walks and seldom casts its eyes. 
Towns are like drunkards: they encourage and request 
some reason-limit of restraint; but, with the last word, 
they no more want reform in fact than they want 
burning at the stake. 

" I would sooner part with my fortune than my 
vices," said Colley Gibber; and cities and Gibbers are 
much of a sort. 

Your casual and not over-interested citizen is much 
justified in discounting the true inwardness of that 
reform which inhabits the mouths of professional and 
incessant " reformers." Folk, whether they know it 
or no, boast themselves, as a rule, for attributes and 
feelings and resolutions whereof, compared with folk 



THE HUMBUG OF BOASTS. 335 

voiceless touching the same, there are least of traces 
in their breasts. Your brave man never names his 
courage; your honest man is dumb as to his integrity. 
And communities, in these habits of self-glorious 
announcement, are exact with individuals. When you 
invade a region which boasts of its hospitality, have a 
care that your purse be well bestowed with money — you 
will pay for what you get. Boston, now that slavery 
is departed by edict of a Kentuckian born and bred 
where slavery was an institution — Boston, now that 
'• Abolition " is an accomplished and a fashionable fact 
— vaunts herself as the first cradle of black freedom in 
this land. "Within the eighteen months next prior to 
Lincoln's election, however, the Concord clergy and 
the town's " best men " besought Thoreau not to speak 
in approval of John Brown or a palliation of his eccen- 
tric liberalisms; while in Boston, Wendell Philips was 
being mobbed and his assassination conspired, for 
preaching " Abolition," and Andrews, Governor, was, 
in that peril, refusing Philips the common shield of 
law. The Pilgrim Fathers and their now descendants 
tell loudly of their love of liberty for all. Yet it 
is none the less a truth that when the passenger traffic 
in pilgrims ran low, the Mayflower was turned into a 
slaver; and instead of Standishes and Bradfords, and 
Winthrops and Aldens, brought over fettered and 
screaming dusk cargoes to moan and toil and know 
the name of freedom never more. Throughout the 
North, one hundred years ago, slavery flourished. It 
was put away; not for that it was some devil's sin, but 
because it didn't pay. The immorality of slavery was 
a Northern afterthought. 

Take the New England otherside. That region was 



336 RICHARD CROKER. 

never known to brag the courage of its people. And 
yet the Yankee is as dauntless as any who sailed 
with Francis Drake. The Yankee will ransack the 
Arctics for whale; he will rock for weeks on the 
misty, wreck-sown Banks of Newfoundland for cod; 
he will go anywhere, dare anything in hunt of 
fortune or to have his way. And your Yankee goes 
blithely to blood. Within weeks following the opening 
gun of our Eevolution, the British were driven from 
New England; and for the seven troublous years to 
ensue, never an Englishman was to make a track in 
Yankee land. It was, with the exception of a British 
ten minutes in a Connecticut port, to be the same in 
the War of 1812. Does such immunity from English fire 
and sword relate no story of the Yankee? And New 
England was the sentimental as well as military point 
at which England should have struck. New York City's 
record is abject by the side of Boston's. This town 
surrendered to every hostile body who came up the 
bay. Any fishing smack of determined violence could 
take the town, and did. 

Twice England invaded seriously this country; and 
both times of set plan of conquest. These schemes of 
invasion were alike. The base was Canada; and the 
line of English triumph was to lie through Champlain 
and along the Hudson. It was easy and simple in 
theory and on a map. It would have been in fact, 
were it not for the Yankee. In the Eevolution the 
English died at Saratoga with Burgoyne; in the last 
war they were sunk in Champlain; in each adventure 
the folk who met them were four of five the Yankees. 
The New England man is a bold and desperate soldier. 
The more so since his strifes have ever a fiscal 



THE NEW ENGLAND MAN. 337 

side. He takes a set of books to a battlefield. As he 
wheels a battery into position, he opens an account. 
He charges himself with the powder burning, credits 
himself with the enemies slain, and while the fight 
pays three per cent, he keeps it up. New England 
never boasts the courage of its people, and yet a 
deathless courage is the overtowering attribute of the 
entire tribe. 

Folk who, in politics or private life, are wont to 
exalt their virtue, may wisely be distrusted as ones 
bankrupt of true virtue. Sometimes such are hypo- 
crites, sometimes only fools who fail themselves to 
know. This is true of " reformers " and " reform." 
Your clamorous reformer is seldom in public earnest, 
and never a public good. Moreover, he is powerless 
for any bleaching change. For reasons of a profit of 
money there is to be no soon disappearance of vice. Vice 
will continue until, commercially, vice, like slavery, 
does not pay. There's a shrewd tribute in rents, and 
in goods and wares purchased and consumed allowed 
by vice to coffers of general trade. Commercialism — 
that pastor to a flock of profit! — that religion of your 
" business man " ! — will ever guard and shepherd vice 
in favor of its rich and final fleece. 

In 1894 the town fell foaming in a fit of sentiment; 
it was pinched of a transient repentance. And it threw 
itself, sobbing, into the laps of those " reformers," 
above described; and whom, like the poor, we have 
always with us. The " reformers " took, and Tammany 
lost, the town. 

It was prior to this by about a twelve-month that 
Eichard Croker resigned his chieftancy of Tammany. 
For thirty years he had stood in the storm for the 



338 RICHARD CROKER. 

organization. He was weary and craved rest. There 
was, however, as he retired, the lamp of one determina- 
tion to glow in his resolves. Those friends who had 
been as the power of his arm, and who were to be 
left behind, must be preserved. They were not to be 
hereafter crushed by the organization in new and per- 
haps jealous hands. That was Croker's compact with 
himself. 

Croker pitched on one, Sheehan, to succeed him. 
Sheehan was skilled in politics, albeit — though not 
without a foxish strength of his own — weak, com- 
pared with Croker. This Sheehan choice of Croker's 
was not popular. The " leaders " were against it. But 
Croker insisted, and by a composite of cajolery and 
compulsion, Croker, as usual, made his way. Sheehan 
was decided on, vice Croker resigned; all answering 
"Aye!" save the obdurate John Scannell, who^ for 
forty years, had been Pythias to Croker's Damon, and 
who, in the face of Croker's pleading, voted " No " to 
the last. Sheehan now at the helm, Croker sought 
England, and an ease cum dignitate. 

Croker was gone from the command of Tammany 
Hall four years. His absence, however, in its true 
effect might best be understood. There was not, dur- 
ing those years, a moment when the throttle and the 
levers of complete leadership were not within his 
reach. He had but to stretch his hands to have them. 
And this, as one read before, was for the conservation 
of those who had been his strength in peace and 
tempest both, and not once faltered of their faith to 
him. 

It was no fault of Sheehan that "reform" beat 
down the town in 1894. Nor should the defeat of two 



BHEEHAN WAS HELPLESS. 33& 

years later, when Bryan lost New York City by some 
twenty thousand, be charged to Sheehan; Bryan 
(locally) was fair impossible. Croker, had he been 
to the fore, might have held the city situation; for his 
personality — as exhibited in 1900, when with no better 
Bryan and no worse McKinley reasons offered than 
were shown four years before, Croker in the saddle 
brought up the town for Bryan by near thirty thousand 
— is worth a difference in favor of Democracy of 
twenty-five thousand men, or fifty thousand in 
majorities. 

Still, while honesty will not lay on Sheehan those 
defeats which smote the Tammany Democracy in 
1894 and the trio of years thereafter, it cannot but be 
admitted that the Sheehan hold on Tammany was not 
strengthened thereby, nor was any organization confi- 
dence in Sheehan's favor thereof generated. And thus 
stood affairs in Tammany, following the Bryan disaster 
of 1896. The Wigwam entered upon 1897 with 
Sheehan in command, but with his grasp of both men 
and matters Democratic much shaken and enfeebled. 

That Croker at this time was not far to call is beheld 
in this: As early as February of that year, Croker was 
on ship, to sail again for England. Sheehan sought 
him and his counsel. 

" Whom should it be for Mayor next autumn? " said 
Sheehan. 

" Van Wyck," responded Croker; " Van Wyck is the 
man you want. He has the three things that Tam- 
many most requires in this year's contest; brains, cour- 
age, and integrity. Name Van Wyck." 

In February Croker had already re-assumed in fact 
the post of leader of the organization; an assumption 



340 RICHARD GROKER. 

which, because of Sheehan's later sly conspirings, was 
nine months afterwards to become as obvious as it was 
actual. 

Sheehan was too small a figure for the supreme seat 
of Tammany Hall. He fell beneath the harrow of 
events. Nevertheless, from any view of justice and 
disinterest, Sheehan was not at fault and had no chance. 
Deluged by defeats over whose causes he had no con- 
trol, torn by an ill fortune that belonged to the party 
at that time and not to him, disliked and disobeyed by 
the full one-half — at least eighteen — of Tammany's 
" leaders," had Sheehan been Philip of Macedon, still 
would he have been swept down. 

Finding himself sinking, Sheehan made a mistake. 
Instead of discerning the source of his weakness in 
himself, and in the situation whereof he was the 
arch's too-small keystone, he believed that Croker was 
secretly pinching off his buds of power. Sheehan 
should have had more wisdom. A half-sagacity would 
have told him that Croker, strong enough to put him 
where he was in the face of protest, was quite equal 
to the mark of puffing him from the scene with any 
breath. Sheehan believed that Croker worked against 
him. Thereupon Sheehan began the transaction of 
some milk-and-water chicanery against Croker. 

These trivial small conspiracies of Sheehan evinced 
themselves in coldness towards and interference 
in disfavor of folk who had been of Croker's Life 
Guards. The darkest might have foretold the out- 
come of such action. And Sheehan had had his warn- 
ing. At a dinner of the " leaders " on the last day of 
Croker's active rule, and when he passed his baton to 
Sheehan, Croker, after demanding of each present in 



CROKERS PROMISE. 341 

the name of what friendship he might hold for him 
(Croker) to yield a best obedience to the new captain 
and strengthen and uphold his hands, said: 

" There is but one thing which will bring me back 
to any active part in politics, and that is the safety of 
my friends. Now that I put aside my command of 
Tammany Hall, and step down into the ranks of the 
organization, — now that I end my leadership in poli- 
tics and leave the field, — I leave behind me those 
whose friendships, in every stress, and through every 
strain and danger, have never failed me. Nor will I 
while I live fail them. Whether it come in one year 
or in ten, and though I should be at earth's most dis- 
tant end, so sure as one of these shall need my aid, 
I'll come to help him. And so I say to you. And so I 
say to this man," and Croker laid his hand on Sheehan's 
shoulder where he sat at table next him, " whom you 
have made your chief." 

This is all of Sheehan; let him be dismissed. Nor 
should judgment torture him; Sheehan is better than 
his story. Therein, however, he is not alone. " The 
evils which men do live after them." None is so bad 
but he is better than his biography. Even one's best 
friend never knows one's best nature; how, then, is he 
to tell of it? The same is true of peoples and of 
periods. All history, as written, comes to be naught 
better than the gutter of time; the beautiful and the 
best of an age are never found therein — only the age's 
drainage. 

Richard Croker returned to power in 1897. It was 
for his friends. He came from England in the sum- 
mer. There transpired then a curious show of the 
tremendous hold of Croker with the men of Tammany 



S4^ jRICHARD CROKEB. 

Hall. No word preceded him; he asked none to meet 
him. Debarking, he went to his hotel. There was no 
syllable of suggestion, or request, or command, to issue 
from him; nothing save days of silence. 

With the coming of Croker, Tammany stagnated. 
There was a profound halt Avith nothing certain but 
uncertainty. Then twenty-two of the thirty-five 
" leaders " together called on Croker. 

" We want you to come back," they said. 

" Are you here as my friends and acquaintances, or 
as * leaders ' of Tammany Hall ? " demanded Croker. 

" We come in our characters of ' leaders.' " 

" There are twenty-two of you," observed Croker. 
" Am I to understand that the thirteen other ' leaders ' 
object to your request?" 

"No," they replied; "thirty-three of the thirty-five 
want you to return to your old command of the organi- 
zation and take charge of this campaign." 

" Tammany's wigwam is in Fourteenth Street," re- 
torted Croker, and his glance was hardened in rebuke. 
"What have you, as 'leaders,' to do on Murray Hill? 
Has the organization been put on wheels since I left, 
that you trundle it about the town? Go back. I will 
come on one condition. Your chief — who is not with 
you — must write me asking my return." 

Croker resumed the guiding staff of Tammany Hall. 
His sway was more absolute even than before. The po- 
litical outlook demanded work. The " reformers " were 
in the wheelhouse of local domination; they swarmed 
in every corner of city mastery. But they were to be 
beaten and scourged and driven from the temple. 
Three years before they had gone to power with a 
majority of seventy thousand; they were to suffer 



TAMMANY RESTORED. 343 

deposal by almost eight)'' thousand. Their reign, 
wrenched and racked with wickedness, could be tracked 
by that dripping corruption which attended its every 
step. Deformation civic and not reformation had 
been the harvest of them. 

Croker adhered to his February thought and put up 
Van Wyck. It was an inspiration. " Greater New 
York " had had Republican construction. This, be- 
tween the parties, was to be the first duel for its ruler- 
ship. Under all the circumstances, fighting on a new 
and larger field, and with the untested machinery of 
the just-built greater city to set in motion. Van Wyck 
was a best nomination. And Van Wyck, with Croker's 
hand on the tiller, came through to victory. Tam- 
many had been redeemed. 

Van Wyck, as Mayor, is one in whom a people may 
not only have a confidence, but take a pride. As Chief 
Executive of the city he makes a safe and graceful 
quantity. Van Wyck is not old; he lives still on the 
sunny side of middle age. He is wise, ardent, indus- 
trious, and of severe integrity. Van Wyck hates a 
rogue, loathes a Pecksniff, and has scant patience with 
a fool. His Democracy is rock-ribbed. There is noth- 
ing of the water-color in his politics; Van Wyck is a 
partisan. For Republicans he has no agreement; for 
Mugwumps no mercy. Jefferson would have adopted 
him; Jackson taken his hand. He was one of the best 
of jurists; he is better still as Mayor. The office will 
wait long at the gates ere a wiser, braver comes to 
fill it. 

There is that which is exemplary in the manliness 
of Van Wyck. He grows to a principle; welds himself 
to a friend. He will stand by both to the last. In this 



344 RICEABD CROEER. 

busy, crowded hour, when egotism rules and every 
man is his own North Star, few there be to wholly 
know and appreciate Van Wyck. The city was new; 
the charter was new. There were jealousy and no 
love between the threescore and ten communities 
which had been herded hastily together to become 
" Greater New York." Van Wyck was the first of his 
line. He had no predecessor whom he might follow; 
no precedent whereby to walk. The charter, like his 
office, smelled of the glue and varnish of yesterday's 
construction. Yet, sans Jolt, and friction, and loss, 
the times have gone with a suave accuracy and a soft 
and carded strength that most towns miss. 

Van Wyck's administration has been a marvel of 
city management. Not only was the town new; worse 
—it was bankrupt. And yet, where has there been 
loss? or failure? or falling away? or retrogression? 
Every interest has been defended; every prospect 
fostered; the town has not only held its ground, it 
has gone forward. Criticism, hate-tipped, cannot 
point to a disaster. Honest, stern for justice, stub- 
born for the good; it is of such Van Wyck wood a 
world, when wise, makes Presidents. 

However, he is worth most where he is. Wildly as 
it may assail the ear as statement, a Mayor is of more 
real and potent moment than a President. The world 
is a fool misled by glitter, deluded of a noise. Eightly 
viewed, from the grounds of immediate citizenship 
and man's daily life, a City Hall is greater than a 
White House. Ordinances are more cogent than gen- 
eral statutes, and the Mayor who vetoes or signs the 
first, of an interest more intimate than that President 
who vetoes or signs the others. By the same word! a 



ONE'S REAL RULERS. 345 

Congressman is of less concern than a Councilman who 
legislates to your doorstep; a supreme judge of no such 
weight as a Magistrate who fines you for not cleaning 
your sidewalk, or a policeman who warns you against 
obstructing the street. Your city rulers are your real 
rulers; while a President is, in truth, as far away and 
cloud-wrapped as the tyrant of some dream. 

Following this contest of 1897, which had for its 
end the avalanching of the Democracy upon its ene- 
mies, and a Tammany retaking of the town, Croker 
seized a first occasion to be publicly heard. It was 
by way of interview in a leading paper: 

" We have just ended an election," he said, " and 
the Democracy was successful. In face of reason, and 
justice, and good sense, the opponents of Democracy 
made me ' the issue.' Every untruth was told; every 
epithet to which slander could lay the malice of its 
tongue or bend its pen was flung against me. I said 
nothing during the progress of the campaign; I have 
lived in New York City for fifty years and was willing 
to let reply to the injustice of my enemies be made 
by the people at the polls. My vilifiers have been 
confuted by a plurality of almost eighty thousand. 
And now that the fight is done, and Democracy has 
triumphed, there is a word for me to say. There 
has never been a specific charge of wrongdoing to be 
laid at my gate. Slander was ever general, and 
never pretended to state a venal fact against me. 
It will be seven weeks before the new Democratic 
administration takes hold. Meanwhile, the opposi- 
tion, and particularly those folk who were most 
active in their press and on their platforms in de- 
faming me, have all the public records in their 



346 RICHARD CROKER. 

possession, and hold every office — city, county, and 
State. Let them dig in their records and hunt in their 
offices. If I have wronged the public in any least de- 
gree, the records must show proofs and traces of it. 
Let these people who have made these wrong charges 
point them particularly out. Seven weeks is ample 
time. They owe it to themselves, as well as to the 
public whose money they draw as salaries and 
have taken an oath to serve. They have all the 
machinery of State and local government; the Gov- 
ernor, the Mayor, the sheriff, the district attorney, the 
juries, the detectives, the police. They have the 
comptroller's office and all the records. Let them 
now show, in at least one instance, directly and specifi- 
cally, where the public has suffered so much as an 
ounce of loss through me. Their failure shall mark 
their tales as slanders and point to them as ones who 
bear false witness." 

In 1898 the Democracy, with Croker in conduct of 
its energies, reswept the town against Roosevelt, justly 
far and away the opposition's most darling figure. 
Croker held the town by nearly ninety thousand. Save 
for rogueries rural, and a worm-fence desertion of the 
party, Croker would have carried the State. Eoose- 
velt, with the fresh and smelling glory of San Juan 
blood upon him, succeeded in the whole State by fewer 
than nineteen thousand. 

In 1899, under Croker, the Democracy again kept 
New York County by seventy thousand; while in 1900 
— with the dragging handicaps of Bryan and Silver 
both — the party with Croker controlled the town by 
twenty thousand. 

It was Bryan and McKinley for a second time in 



„ ^.-gL^'-'^-ff. 


^■ 


ij 









i'AVID B. iilLL. 



WILLIAM MCKINLEY. 347 

1900. The latter, plastic, ductile, docile, safe, had 
pleased his party's magnates well. He had been sweet 
to management. He owed everything to Hanna, and 
he paid in full. Eeed was possessed of a precise 
thought when, in response to query put just following 
McKinley's first inaugural, he said: 

"Hanna run for the Presidency in 1900? Why 
should he snatch at the shadow when he has the 
substance?" 

McKinley is the middle size of man. He is passive; he 
is acted upon and does not act. He is prudent of him- 
self; nor over-sensitive. He strikes poses and becomes 
a picture. He shrinks from the new. He sees nothing 
that has not been seen, hears nothing that has not 
been heard, finds nothing that has not been found, 
says nothing that has not been said, thinks nothing 
that has not been thought, knows nothing that has 
not been known, does nothing that has not been done, 
and would neither eat nor breathe were there not 
precedent for each. He is a peg of a President on 
which Money hangs its hat as it sits down to the con- 
duct of government — a snubbing post to which all 
craft, pirate and merchantman, tie up alike. Is he 
honest? — yes. 

" There are different kinds of honesty," quoth Mor- 
rison, once of the Ways and Means. " There is this 
man McKinley; he's honest. There was Eandall; he 
was honest. And, for myself, I ceckon I'm honest. 
But there is this difference. If I were to fall into 
bankruptcy, no rich men would pay my debts. If I 
were to die, no rich men would present my widow with 
one hundred thousand dollars. I'll tell you why. My 
sort of honesty never did that sort of fellow any good," 



XX. 

THE TRUSTS. 

For Falsehood now doth flow, 

And subject's faith doth ebbe; 
Which would not bee if Reason rul'd 

Or Wisdom wove the webbe. 

— Percy's Reliqu£s. 

Bryan was beaten in the second campaign as de- 
cisively as in the one before. The " business inter- 
ests " were afraid of him. Most men, and peculiarly 
" business men," with that unintelligence to which 
the mob seems grafted, think they are electing a god 
rather than a President — a god whose power, like a 
Gorgon's head, could, did he care to exercise it, turn 
them into stone. They should ruminate a bit; the 
President is not a legislative body. And, if he were, 
one cannot enact " prosperity " by terms of law. The 
world has " good times " and " bad times," and com- 
merce its tides to come and go. These are, so to say, 
as an aspiration and an inspiration of trade, — a busi- 
ness breathing, if you will — and have no more to do 
with politics than with the pastoral rite of sheep- 
washing in Ettrick's distant dales. The President, 
building the nest of his ambitions in the White House 
to hatch the eggs of his little policies, is like a bird 
similarly nest-building in the top of a tree; and one 
has not more to do with any following " prosperity " 
or its bankrupt absence, than has the other with that 
year's crop of nuts. But " business men " don't know 
these things. 



CAMP-MEETINQ CAMPAIGNS. 349 

That " management " of a national Democracy in 
1900 was of the camp-meeting character of the prior 
campaign. This did not make for loss, however, 
as Democracy was doomed in advance. Bryan was 
beaten by bad management in 1896; in 1900 Bryan 
defeated himself. Bryan mislaid the issue. 

In practical truth, and beyond a simplest campaign 
purpose, issues do not count. Nobody in or out of 
office heeds the issue after an election. One has war- 
rant for this: In 1892 a President was elected on a 
tariff issue: and to please the banks he called an extra 
session for finance. In 1896, a President was elected 
on an issue of finance; and at the request of manu- 
facturers he called an extra session for tariff. And 
thereat the peasantry seemed pleased; at least there 
was no complaint; wherefore, as said before, one 
may assume that after an election an issue doesn't 
count. 

But before an election, and in the shock of parties, 
issues are tremendously important. And Br5'an 
turned up the wrong lane. He struck for Silver; an 
issue live and real in his first battle, but surrendered 
and departed from by the masses in 1900. Bryan 
planted himself on Silver. He should have had more 
of the education of events. 

Silver, finance, is (to use a colloquialism) a hard-luck 
issue. It is a raft, or a breeches buoy; to be popular, 
the public must first feel itself wrecked. The place to 
look for an issue is not your pocket, nor the selfish plans 
of politicians hoping place; the issue is found in the 
question of the people. Bryan didn't realize this; he 
adhered to Silver and was buried with it — buried 
Presidentially for all coming time. 



350 RICHARD CROEER. 

Bryan's error was grown of a multiplied experience 
of cheap men. He had met many men; but not the 
right men. Bryan, for four years, met only those who 
came to him. Such offer but a meager and misleading 
course of study. One learns little or nothing of folk 
who come to one. Emphatically is this true of those 
about whom there has been much of talk and uproar. 
By advertisement of their powers, or fortunes, politi- 
cal or otherwise, certain men become raised above the 
rest. There they stand like lighthouses; and flagrate 
with this oil of ink, they shine attractively to moral 
bats, and all lunatic fowl of politics, and insects of 
mental night. Thus it was with Bryan. Those who 
came, and hung, and fluttered in his face, and whose 
squeaking cheeps, and buzzings filled his ears, told 
him no wisdom, endowed him with no thought. This 
ruined Bryan; just as a similar siege of wittol admira- 
tion broke down Cleveland in his second reign. Bryan 
did not meet, and talk, and mentally hug and wrestle 
with the right folk. And thereby he missed the issue, 
and the Presidency. 

No man is original; none a law unto himself. There 
is no such thing as a tub on its own bottom — it is ever 
a borrowed bottom. To have ideas, a man must 
scratch himself like a match against another man. 
Sparks come only from sharp collision and brisk con- 
tact; never of themselves. Next to meeting men, read 
books. Books for wisdom; men for collecting a flow, 
a flash, a dash, a vividity of spirit. Were I called to 
conference with youth ambitious of a greatest destiny, 
I would talk like this: Meet men. Dress well. To mount 
in life you must meet and deal with men; and you are 
to rise or fall by men's impressions of you. A first im- 



COTfNSEL SARTORIAL. 351 

pression is the impression important — it will wear and 
last. And folk are reached most deeply through the 
eye; the ear is but a poor avenue for one's approach. 
Would you know the difference between the ear and 
the eye as conduits of impression? Listen, then, to a 
tale descriptive of one who has been run down and 
crushed by a street car. You will feel the conventional 
horror; then, in a moment, the picture has faded from 
your mind. Be an eye-witness to some such grisly 
catastrophe. You will fall sick, lose appetite, start in 
your sleep for months. Dress well as a method of 
beneficial first impression, and to lure the favor of the 
other's eye. Be certain of the definition of the phrase 
" dress well." 

" He was so well dressed," said Alvanley, " that 
everybody turned to look at him." 

" Then he was not well dressed," retorted Brunimel. 
And the Beau was right. 

One will not sooner enlist the antagonism — aye! I 
had almost said the hatred — of a stranger, than by 
some bright extravagance of dress. It is an animalism; 
but one should reflect that men are only animals; one 
must be on the watch for animalisms. They are more 
dangerous than intellectualities, and must be dodged. 
Refuse all fantasticisms of costume. You may try 
this on the dog. Select some sedate, common form of 
dog. Walk him for a mile along the street. A dozen 
dogs will see him and bestow upon him no violent at- 
tention. Tie a red handkerchief about his neck. 
Those dozen dogs will assail him out of hand; they 
will comment on and criticise him with their teeth. 
They resent the red handkerchief. Once a friend re- 
fused a business transaction with a person, much a 



352 RICHARD CROKER. 

stranger to him, but of good repute. Both lost thou- 
sands by that negative. I asked my friend wherefore 
he turned his back on an arrangement so manifest of 
profit. He said that he despised the other man. Pressed 
for cause, he at last reluctantly confessed that his 
antipathy was born of the fact that the first time 
he saw the one in question the latter had a broad red 
collar of silk about his neck, upholding, low on his 
shirt front, a massive gold medallion, the badge of 
some foolish order of American " nobility." My friend 
had loathed him ever since; he preferred a loss of 
thousands to the torture of a ten-day business con- 
junction with him. 

When the sun has gone down wear dress-clothes. 
Evening clothes are the most democratic of uniforms. 
They are rigid, and put a limit on extravagance. They 
are a palladium; they prevent the billionaire from blot- 
ting one out with an opulence of costume. They are a 
best bulwark of Americanism. 

Avoid clubs; join some good chophouse. Clubs are 
clearing houses of inanity; seminaries where dullness 
is taught as an art. You will find no giants there. 
They are but shallow waters; clubs are not meant for 
any swimming of big fish. Clubs are designed to ex- 
clude opinion, and by a spirit of social elimination 
include " respectability." Go carefully with this last 
term; it is a most determined cheat. Clubs offer but 
two advantages, and these are such only to folk who 
feel their want. They present a privilege of gambling 
without fear of the constables; and offer the oppor- 
tunity of over-drink with a least risk of disrepute. They 
never help and always hurt. Join some superlative 
chophouse. One meets everybody in a chophouse; any- 



THE WOMAN GOOD. 363 

body in a club. The first is preferable; one gets more 
for one's conversation. 

Meet the best women. Women, beautiful and bril- 
liant, shape and polish men, and give them an air and 
an edge. You can't see too many wise and beautiful 
Hypatias. Men are quicker, braver, wittier, better, in 
the presence of a woman, just as the male bird, in those 
seasons when he seeks to engage the approval of the 
female, takes on a livelier note, a brighter color, and a 
bolder strut. Meet as many beautiful and brilliant 
women as you can; seek for them as for lost treasure. 
Each is an epigram. Marry one, if she will. You 
will secure counsel and a dignity thereby. And you 
will not become that moral, mental, physical quick- 
sand called a bachelor. There is no respect for 
the bachelor; nothing save suspicion. He is a blow 
aimed at the race. He has the place in society of a 
fox in a barnyard. It has been ever so; it is human 
nature. Dercyllidas was a brave soldier of Sparta; but 
Dercyllidas was a bachelor. When a youth refused to 
give him a seat, with the remark, " No child of yours 
will ever make room for me," the youth had the ap- 
plause of the elders. 

Have no vanities, exhibit none. Strive to understand 
the word. Long hair on a man proves vanity. Short 
hair on a woman, or a gown of ostentatious plainness, 
and a bald pattern, as though designed to fit a billet of 
wood, is evidence of vanity. Moreover, it tells of a 
vulgar vanity — a vanity that almost crowds to im- 
morality. Greeley was, in his way, a fop; Diogenes, 
in his tub, a prig. They were both slaves of vanity — 
the conceit of the studied uncouth. 

Vanity is various and wide-flung. One meets with 



364 RICHARD CROKER. 

vanities of all kinds. Once I descended upon Concord 
where Yankee, when time was, met Briton in a first 
discussion of the Revolution. I came not there in any 
way of idleness; I was sent to write and to work. My 
business was to engross what thoughts might come of 
those literary great ones whose memories were as that 
hamlet's halo. Of these ones of renown there had been 
him to stand above the others. I had read his words. 
They were heavy with a phrase-haze and a fog of 
spirit, yet alight and thundrous of the thought, storm- 
born. Titanic figures showed dimly in them, like 
mountains in a mist. It was as though afar and be- 
yond and behind the horizon of his being there had 
dwelt a world of mighty ideas, whereof a mirage was 
again and again projected into his brain — the formida- 
ble shadows of majestic things; but, alas! like all 
mirages, upside down. And he would describe these 
visions. Multitudes read his writings; for while one 
felt the confusion as of one standing on one's head, 
yet they had their charm. 

This pen-Thor was long dead before my time. But 
his home of former days was there, appointed and fur- 
nished as he had left it. I would see this home; 
it would waft me an inspiration. The spinster 
daughter of our god departed occupied the house. She 
was of years, and I fear me soured of a ferment of 
time and too much singleness. I sent her a note, and 
begged for five minutes of that house whenever she 
should say. Also, as displaying faith, I disclosed my 
mission of the magazine. That letter would have won 
me audience of the Pope. For a later purpose of 
initial, I will miscall the god "Oak"; and his de- 
scendant spinster, " Mistletoe." I had this reply: 



VANITY ON STILTS. 366 

" Miss M. must excuse herself from receiving any 
call. Miss M. requests Mr. L. not to name her in his 
Concord article, as she is a private person. Mr. O.'s 
biography is in the public library and will tell all that 
is necessary to know about him." 

This was vanity, — a discouraging case of vanity on 
the maiden's part, — a vanity which denied a plain right 
of the public and of mine. Also, I had said naught of 
mentioning " Miss M." in any article. The god, afore- 
said, had of his own choice kicked and pounded with 
his pen-hammer at the front door of general notice 
until a good-natured world unbarred and let him in. 
The public clapped fame on his crest, and gave him 
wealth. This note of Miss Mistletoe was not a way 
wherein to entertain the honest approach of a 
curiosity which her parent god had personally planted 
and nursed. I wrote the following rebuke, in which I 
endeavored in my fashion to propose a question of much 
fine personal right. It was my hope that the Concord 
School of Philosophy might be trepanned into taking 
it up in debate and so wreck itself as on a rock: 

" Mr. L. re-presents his compliments to Miss M. and 
thanks her for the note. Mr. L., in deference to Miss 
M.'s request, will not name her in his Concord article. 
Mr. L. is driven, however, to say that he holds Miss 
M.'s request unjust. Miss M. has perfect right to her 
existence, and to see or not see people as Miss M. may 
be pleased to determine. But Miss M. has no more 
right to the fact of her existence than has Miss M. to 
the tracks she made in yesterday's snow. It is any- 
body's, everybody's to remember, dwell on, mention. 



356 RICHARD CROKER. 

and revere in any proper way. Mr. L. will not 
elaborate his theory and weary Miss M., but rest 
content with its statement. Mr. L. is confident that 
Miss M. will, in her thoughtful seclusion, one time 
justify it; she may even conclude in the premises that 
her request smacks of advertisement and the prayer 
of the Pharisee. Mr. L. will still remain the servant 
of Miss M. in his disappointment." 

There was, to my note, no reply; I was treated with 
merited contempt. Neither did the School of Philoso- 
phy break its discussional shins thereon. I still con- 
tend, however, that the barred and bolted attitude of 
Miss M. was born of vanity and nothing else; and I 
warn that youth with whom I now converse, and for 
whose enlargement I have prevailed on myself to re- 
late this painful tale, not to unbend in any like poor 
conduct with Miss M.'s, should he one day be similarly 
placed. Miss M, is in the wrong. There she sits; 
gnawing the nail of her vanity, blocking the way to a 
shrine. 

Don't be ashamed to accept this counsel, oh, youth! 
Jupiter, himself, was raised on goat's milk. Incline, 
therefore, your further ear. Be a gentleman. One 
speaks not now of that wasp-waisted gentility that 
founds itself on golf, and polo, and automobiles, and 
single-stickers, and four-in-hands, and which boasts as 
best acquirement a graceful ability to pick up a lady's 
fan, or that weird sagacity which knows the confusing 
fish-fork from its fellows as our gentility sits down to 
dine. That gentility demands as its foot-stone a dead 
and hopeless middleness, moral and intellectual, which 
it is to be thought you've missed. No; one points 



THAT BEST GENTILITY. 357 

rather to another gentility, flower of a much-wisdom, 
a stalwart sympathy, and a kind probity of heart. One 
piping critic — a callow creature this, of hollow chest 
and hollow head and hollow heart, and of a man- 
hood as sallow as his cheek — one piping critic, I say, 
complained to me that Croker was not, as he expressed 
it, " a gentleman "; that is, he had no pink-tea graces 
and would expand to nothing ornamental as an ele- 
ment of cotillions. Sappy was right; and yet should he 
be instructed: Genius is never a "gentleman," as 
Sappy struggles with the term. Cromwell was " no 
gentleman " ; Napoleon was " no gentleman " ; our 
own Grant adorned a line of battle rather than those 
ranks of social tinsel styled " our best." 

In matters of even a slightest concern, for one may 
never foretell a final magnitude, approach decision with 
caution. And never decide in the night. Plan in the 
night as much as ever you please; but reserve conclu- 
sion for the day — resolve only when the sun is up. 
The night is a season of impulse — a reckless time. 
Darkness calls to the predatory in man's nature — 
calls on his inner wolfishness to rouse itself. The 
going down of the sun promotes the crime tendency 
in man. Congress should never sit in the night. The 
moral tone is at its lowest, charity is diminished, the 
sentinels of one's better soul are heavy and somnolent, 
and even Justice nods — in the night. The larger share 
by three-fold of all the blood and horror and tragic 
atrocity of the French revolution found decision in 
the absence of the sun. Wherefore, though you may 
consider in the night, conclude only in the face of day. 

Shall you travel widely, do you ask? Travel is of 
no such mad and boiling commandment as the example 



368 RICHARD CROKER. 

of idle rich ones, desperate of much wealth and run- 
ning from themselves, might teach one to believe. It 
IS better to read a book than see a city. There is a 
regional sameness wherever you go. As ever it is hill 
and vale and grass and tree and lake and river, with 
the same sun swinging in the selfsame heavens over- 
head. He sees as much who bides at home. Old Whit- 
tier had it right: 

I know not how in other lands 

The changing seasons come and go ; 
What splendors fall on Syrian sands, 

What purple lights on Alpine snow ! 
Nor how the pomp of sunrise waits 

On Venice at her watery gates ; 
A dream alone to me is Arno's vale, 

And the Alhambra's halls are but a traveler's tale. 

Yet on life's current he who drifts 

Is one with him who rows or sails ; 
And he who wanders widest lifts 

No more of beauty's jealous veils 
Than he who from his doorway sees 

The miracle of flowers and trees, 
Feels the warm Orient in the noonday air, 

And from cloud minarets hears the sunset call to 
prayer ! 

The eye may well be glad that looks 

Where Pharpar's fountains rise and fall ; 
But he who sees his native brooks 

Laugh in the sun has seen them all. 
The marble palaces of Ind 

Rise round him in the snow and wind ; 
From his lone sweetbrier Persian Hafiz smiles, 

And Rome's cathedral awe is in his woodland aisles. 

Thoreau would not go to Paris, for he couldn't 



THE ARMOR OF BOOKS. 359 

spare the time from Concord and Walden Pond. The 
Thoreau precedent of home-staying is not bad. 

Never ride when you may walk; eat thrice a day; 
sleep eight hours; and meet men. Also, carry a book 
about you. Some storm may blow a fool upon you, and 
the book shall be as a harbor and a haven where you 
may ride safely out the tempest. Carry Lamb's "Elia," 
or Bacon's " Essays," or More's " Utopia," or Plato's 
" Eepublic," or Bayard Taylor's " Echo Club," or 
Thackeray's " Eose and Ring," or Virgil's " Eclogues," 
or Hazlitt's " Spirit of the Age," or Shaftesbury's 
" Characteristics," or Gay's " Fables," or Heine's 
" Ballads," or some such printed gear. These are all 
to be had in baby volumes — little and light and fitted 
to a pocket. Any one of them is a perfect bombproof 
from the devastating fire of a fool. Some natures — 
morbid, sensitive, haunted of ghosts — may shrink 
from a ruthless going among men. There are such 
shaken folk. Coleridge was one of these. He couldn't 
bring himself to open a letter, and would let one lie 
for untouched weeks as if it caged a cobra. Collins 
fled from London, raved if he but heard men's voices 
in an anthem, and went mad among rural graves. 
These children of the morbid and De Quincey strain 
are the ones of all who should mingle broadly with 
men. There is a sanity in much meeting of men. 
Only meet men enough, and one will gather to himself 
a happiness, a soul-health, and a good fortune allowed 
to dwell with none save the Hyperborean. 

Bryan misunderstood the issue. Bryan fought for 
Silver, and finance in 1900 was not the question. The 
appeals of predatory wealth — the Black Sanctus of 
Money praying to the devil — had been rewarded with 



360 RICHABD CROKER. 

the Tnist. And the question of the Trust was in the 
hearts and on the beating lips of common men; it was 
Trusts they would have answered; Trusts were the 
issue. And Trusts are like to be the issue these rolling 
many care-trodden years to come. 

Clisthenes invented ostracism for the Athenians. 
He, of Athens, who by money or intrigue made him- 
self a common menace could be exiled by popular vote. 
There should be a next amendment to the Constitu- 
tion arranging for an American ostracism. There are 
one hundred folk of whom it might be said that were 
they thrust forth from a residence, debarred our courts, 
and stripped of right to property, the future of liberty 
among this people would brighten by one-third. 

If one were to bend one's self to Trusts, one might 
better begin with that inquiry of Trust parentage sug- 
gested of Havemeyer, and study Protection. Protec- 
tion, as a shout of politics, was first loudly heard far 
back in the twenties, when Jackson and Adams and 
Clay and Crawford met in four-sided White House 
contention. The tariff imposed to pay the expense of 
the War of 1812 was found grateful by the manu- 
facturers of that day; gluttons then as gluttons now. 
But in the twenties the debt was well towards being 
met; the tariff reason was departing. So the manu- 
facturers, inventing the pretext of Protection, 
clamored, squealing — as ever swine for swill — for tariff 
continuation. 

It was Calhoun who first said: " Free raw ma- 
terials." This phrase he made while contending Dem- 
ocratically for a " tariff for revenue only," and the Pro- 
tection incident thereunto. " Free raw materials " 
was a concession to manufacturers — a sort of sop to 



THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF. 361 

Cerberus — and meant for their mollification. Since 
then, party readers, rather than party reasoners, have 
repeated it as a tenet of Democracy, and withal holy. 
Within our own time, Morrison — the first Democrat 
to head the Ways and Means following Civil War — ac- 
cepted it. With Morrison, as with Calhoun, however, 
" Free raw materials " was a concession, not a principle. 

As an after contingency of Civil War, as in the days 
to follow the last war with England, the American 
manufacturer basked in the sunshine of a tariff that 
bred riches in his favor like a growth of grass. And 
he couldn't get it high enough, such was his money- 
gluttony to gorge his pockets. Thus, in our own eaten 
hour. Protection again became a war-shout of party. 
And as the Whigs of the earlier part of the century 
had it for their slogan, so also their Eepublican lega- 
tees, of the latter quarter, used it for theirs. 

Protection is the name for that excess of tariff which 
the country does not need to pay its bills. And the 
Supreme Court long ago declared it illegal. The 
Supreme Court asserted that the nation's taxing or 
tariff power could not legally be pushed beyond the 
limit of public need. This did not deter the Protec- 
tionists, who never yet balked of a desire because of 
its illicit sort. They waved the bloody shirt, aroused 
Northern terrors with the picture of a malcontent and 
scowling South, elected their Congresses, and did the 
hungry will of the manufacturers. 

Our Republicans gave the manufacturers Protec- 
tion. Also, for their own defense, they did another 
thing. They piled, and piled, and piled up public 
expense. This was to do away with the use of Pro- 
tection as a phrase. It was, as a coninjandment of 



862 RICHARD CROEER. 

Eepublicanism, alarming to the public, and, therefore, 
perilous to party. But the fact of Protection could 
not be surrendered, for the swinish voracity of manu- 
facturers — who furnished the campaign funds of Ee- 
publicanism — demanded it. The easy settlement was 
to increase public expense. Even a Democrat could 
not object to " a tariff for revenue only." Therefore, 
pile up expense; and thereby pile up the want of reve- 
nue to a figure where the tariff built to meet it would 
cover the last call of the manufacturers, and still 
avoid the distinctive and dangerous title of Pro- 
tection. 

Within the decade Republican Congresses have done 
their most to inflate appropriations and waste the peo- 
ple's money. And all for no reason, beyond the bare 
first fact of direct loot, ever agreeable to your true 
Protectionist in place, than to base thereon a tariff, 
which should add to the fortunes — blood-garnered and 
criminal in many instances — of that whole long muster 
of wolves who, for the past quarter of a century, have 
worn sheep's clothing and marauded the fair flocks of 
common weal. A glance — hit or miss — at the expense 
history of this country will show what Protectionists 
have done. In Monroe's time, the over-all expense of 
government was eight and one-half millions; in Jack- 
son's bold hour, thirteen millions; as late as Buchanan's 
regime, the year before Lincoln came to the White 
House, it was under fifty-six millions. To-day, the an- 
nual expense of government is over nine hundred mil- 
lions. " Tariff for revenue only! " is good enough. No 
one shall run the chance of shouting " Protection! " 
Meanwhile, the favored manufacturers fill their pockets 
with both hajids. How have the Protectionists swelled 




The Tammany Monument at Gettysburg. 



THE SCIENCE OF PLUNDER. 363 

the expense of government? In a thousand somber 
fashions. Direct fraud, pensions, contracts, place- 
making — the larcenous story would hardly have an 
end. Be assured of this: The nation, now costing 
more than nine hundred yearly millions, can run for 
one hundred millions; and be at that as much a world's 
force as in that thirteen-million-dollar day of the 
grand Jackson, when he ordered his fleets into the 
Mediterranean — the Constitution at the head of the 
column — and forced France to give up seven and one- 
half millions at the mouth of the gun. 

Your sole " reason " of Protection is private 
rapacity; there was never the public argument for its 
invention. Protection said " infant industries! " 
An industry so unnatural to the soil that it requires a 
subsidy — in short, Protection — should be allowed to 
die. Because some harebrain would raise lemons in 
Vermont, must some highboard fence of tariff against 
the coming of lemons to these lands be built for his 
protection? And yet that is the redudio ad absurdum 
of the argument of " infant industries." The Protec- 
tionists said we should continue — by Protection — to 
foster " home industries," until we could fulfill our 
every want. There are one thousand necessities, from 
sardines to cinnamon, camel's hair to quinine, which 
we will never supply by any product of home, however 
hotbedded or hothoused of Protection. It was urged 
that Protection was a mantlet wherewith to make se- 
cure the American workman from arrowish " competi- 
tion with pauper labor over-seas." Its effect, direct, 
was to bring him into that penniless competition. Pro- 
tection drove off foreign competition; it left less for 
the foreigner to do. The " foreign pauper workman " 



364 RICHARD CROKER. 

thereupon took steerage passage for America. In two 
weeks he was " competing " with the American work- 
man — this "foreign pauper workman " whose work had 
been lost, because his foreign employer lost, through 
Protection, the American market. They said Protec- 
tion would promote the wage of the American work- 
man. There are guilds which Protection can never 
reach. There are doctors, and blacksmiths, and law- 
yers, and farmers, and teachers, and carpenters, and 
preachers, and bricklayers, and a brigade of trades be- 
sides. No Protection, however craftily devised or hon- 
estly dealt forth, could touch pleasantly one of these. 
And yet of the twenty-eight millions of work-folk in 
America they make twenty-three and one-half millions. 
Only four and one-half millions toil for " protected 
industries." And by the same tariff thought of Pro- 
tection cheat and swindle! the wages paid folk who 
work for " protected industries " are lower than those 
of unprotected and unprotectable trades. Witness the 
five-dollar a week wage of the Fall River mills; the 
eight-dollars a week, for five months in the year, at 
the coal holes; the fifty-five-dollar a month which the 
friendly Congressional Committee, headed by Gates, 
reported as the highest average wage paid by Carnegie, 
when the cut was made that called down the blood and 
murder of the Homestead strike. The collection of 
proofs to show a Protection mendacity might be 
lengthened indefinitely. No; Protection, based on 
lies, to enable the few to deplete the many, has 
been publicly a bloodsucker and privately a blight. 
It has made a huddle of millionaires and a horde of 
vagrants. It has also taught this civic truth: Never 
take your President from a manufacturing State. 



WHEREUPON THE TRUST. 365 

Take him from the regions of agriculture; from the 
kingdom of farms. 

And because sundry millionaires have made more 
millions, they call the country prosperous: Mere wealth 
in a country doesn't mean prosperity. It is the distri- 
bution of wealth. A community of one thousand souls, 
and each with fifty thousand dollars, would be an 
aggregate of fifty million dollars; and it would be a 
tale to tell of a people prosperous and well content. But 
a community of one thousand souls, where one had 
fifty million dollars, and nine hundred and ninety-nine 
not one dollar among them, would be a den where all 
the serpents of slaver}^, ignorance, misery, and degrada- 
tion would coil and hiss and strike. 

Protection has had but one beneficiary: the pro- 
tected manufacturer. It took from others and it gave 
to him. Protection has had but one purpose: to beat 
down foreign competition and give to the protected 
manufacturer the American market, uncontested, as 
his own. Foreign manufacturers have been driven 
away. That's why our papers are each year able to 
chronicle an excess of exports over imports; and so 
witlessly gratulate themselves and us on the " pros- 
perity " thus expressed. 

It is at this mile-post that the rede of Havemeyer 
is overtaken. " Protection is the mother of Trusts! " 
The latter had logical suggestion from the first. Pro- 
tection struck down competition from abroad. Trusts 
would strike down competition at home. Add Trusts 
to Protection — or, with expenses fraud-bloated and 
dropsied of much crime, a " tariff for revenue only " — 
and competition completely disappears. Also, with 
Trusts, much of the cost of production fades away. 



366 RICHARD CROEER. 

Salesmen are sent adrift, work-folk laid off, mills shut 
down, production pinched to the market minimum. 
Your transcendent Trust works both ways. It hires 
fewer men, and so cuts down expense. It kills off 
competition, and leaves an open path to higher price. 
Trusts put down the cost price and put up the sell- 
ing price; swell the intake while restricting the 
outgo. 

There is a law called the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. 
By its sure terms every Trust is outlaw — a wolf's-head; 
and that, despite the paid-for word of a Trustbred 
Attorney General, who, with a Trust conscience, holds 
a Trust commission as a Cabineteer. The Trusts are 
felons by word of law. Kepublicanism insists that they 
are the people's friends. The Trusts condemn working- 
folk to idleness and low wage. Eepublicanism declares 
them to be beneficent. The Trusts, having silenced 
competition among their members, and protected by a 
breakwater tariff against European competition, have, 
in one year, while cutting down expenses, boosted 
prices from fifty to one hundred and fifty per cent. 
And, as usual, a doltish public pays the penalty. And, 
equally as usual — for such is its benign notion of the 
beautiful — Republicanism declares that Trusts are 
heaven-sent blessings from Above. Such is the Trust- 
owned Republicanism of to-day. It isn't the Repub- 
licanism of Lincoln's honored time. Lincoln's Re- 
publicanism made for the slave freedom. Present Re- 
publicanism pays twenty millions of dollars for a realm 
where slavery flourishes, and approves that bondage 
by direct and patronizing recognition. Lincoln's Re- 
publicanism spoke from his seat in the House against 
an American throne. Present Republicanism has its 



OPHIDIAN COMMERCE. 367 

satrap in the Orient and keeps a Sultan on its salary 
list. 

There one has a weak and half-told story of the 
Trusts. They are veriest vines of rapacity clambering 
on the people's needs. This is the age of a saurian 
business — the age of the mammoth frog and giant 
lizard of commerce — the age of an ophidian trade. 
But the flood comes! The glaciers make themselves 
prepared! In the raving madness of this money-rush, 
honor, conscience, justice, wisdom, all are trodden un- 
derfoot. Men go on and on: they gather one million! 
five millions! ten millions! fifty millions! one hundred 
millions! two hundred millions! aye! three hundred 
millions! and still they press crazily forward! There is 
no frontier to their voracity, no limit to their senseless 
heat for gold. They have gone beyond lines of 
necessity, of comfort, of luxury, and pushed into 
regions where dwell only Anxiety and Danger, and 
where no good thing ever walks. Verily! there is an 
insanity of avarice that takes without want and seizes 
beyond power to enjoy! It is insanity — as much as 
that which yells in any padded cell to-night. And the 
public question becomes: Are we to let these maniacs 
of millions desolate a nation and lay waste the last 
prospect of popular right? 

Look where one will, one's eyes rest on a Trust. 
Flour, coal, beef, leather, oil, milk, iron, steel, sugar — 
there isn't an item, except a stunted few directly farm- 
bom, that isn't dominated of a Trust. Competition 
is dead — Trust-slain. The buyer is thrall to the seller. 
The consumer's last shilling is subject to Trust whistle 
and must come at Trust call. Nor has the end been 
reached. There is yet to be a little and still a little 



368 RICHARD CROKER. 

more of Trust preparation. Then will these corps of a 
lupine Money move upon the people. There will be 
three of these armies of darkness: There will be the 
Money Trust direct; a combination of the Banks. This 
is to be the guardian of the country, and rule at 
once its currency and credit. There will be the Manu- 
facturing Trust, including the coal holes. Last, and 
yet not vilely least, there will be the Transportation 
Trust; and the railroads will act as one. These legions 
of greed have but one purpose — to devour the people. 
They will agree among themselves; certainly they 
connive such ignoble harmony. The public is to be 
stripped of every groat — of its last robe. Then the 
spoilers — the Bank Trust, the Railroad Trust, and the 
Manufacturing Trust — will cast lots among themselves 
in division of the garments. 

One is fain to yawn disgustedly as one gazes down 
the coming public years. And, betimes, one longs for 
that simple hour of the fathers, when every man could 
say a prayer and shoot a gun — and did. Does it come 
to you who read, that, save in Civil War, never 
until 1877 at Pittsburg, was the soldier brought to 
fix bayonet against the citizen? For one hundred 
years, except in the Whisky Insurrection of a day of 
Washington, when no blood flowed and the question of 
labor had no part, nothing of that deadly sort was 
called for to maintain American folk in civic order. 
Those hundred years were free of any foulness of a 
Republican Protection. Is it coincidence? or is it 
cause and effect? For a century no Federal bayonet 
nor bullet was demanded in the fortunes of manufac- 
turing. For the last quarter of a century — an age of 
Protection to find its criminal climax in the Trust — 



THE FUTILE BAYONET. 369 

the Federal soldiery have had constant calling out to 
police strikes and put down riots. And, by the casual 
way, does it occur to you that folk don't strike for fun? 
and that a riot has a reason? Bad, truly! but still a 
reason; and one not possible of bayonet removal. A 
score of times since 1877 the Federal troops have been 
summoned to a campaign against labor. And whatever 
timidity, or vacuity, or servility may say or think, 
those bayonets were each time pr}ang and digging at 
the corner stone of freedom. 

What is to happen? During two years. Trusts 
formed and — stock and bonds — created six billion dol- 
lars of new credit. Over sixty per cent, of the amount 
was water — a falsity! a hope! a hunger! a trap! In the 
same two years only one hundred and thirty million 
dollars, new money, were added to the circulation. And 
these proportions of Trust and currency construction 
are still observed. What should be the story? What is 
credit? It's a wolf — a mouth that howls for money. The 
banks are gorged with Trust securities. They wait for 
money — for lenders and buyers. For every dollar that 
exists there are twenty demands. The Trust-mongers 
want to sell, at least, the water in those six billions. 
Then let the storm break how and when it will. 
And so they crowd and jostle and struggle for customers 
for those Trust " securities "! It is all the banks may 
do to preserve order in this hungr}' herd and stave off 
slaughter. 

Folk talk of Prosperity. Man! it's the Prosperity 
of drunkenness! the Prosperity that speculates but 
doesn't earn — that forays but doesn't work! Trust 
" securities " to the siren song of billions have been 
new-hatched. They are hunting money. And of those 



370 RTGEARD CROKER. 

billions of " securities/' more than one-half reposes on 
nothing but appetite and fraud. To lure customers 
for these " securities " the Trusts put up prices of com- 
modities. They must show a dividend on those billions' 
worth of " securities." Then they may find buyers — 
hoodwink fools into parting with their money for those 
false " securities." Your Trusts are rigged to rob in 
all directions. They pillage the consumer with higher 
prices, and delude investors with unbased, watered 
" securities," It is a brave game, this Trust game! It 
is the swindling offspring of the swindle. Protection. 
Both do credit to the party which created them — a 
party which has not drawn one breath of patriotism 
since the days of Grant. 

Boldly, your lesson of the Trust is the thought com- 
mercial. And as apparent as a lemon-squeezer! And 
as crushingly effectual! Wages are cut, employment is 
cut, and men are made idle. The idle men compete 
with those at work, and wages are thereby pared still 
more. Competition being dead, the consumer is 
searched and re-searched for his final dime. It's a 
flourishing system; albeit, pushed to its last expression, 
the system that kills the goose that lays the golden 
egg\ But the Banks may be expected to attend to 
that. They will supervise the intemperance of the 
other Trusts, and interpose to sustain the goose with 
just enough of life to " lay." 

Since Chaos wedded Nyx, and the hideous slumbers 
of Disorder and Darkness dwelt together in their ebon 
bed, posterity has lain under no such danger as to-day's. 
Money — the Trust — drags down the hours as wolves 
drag down the deer. Money should beware. Money 
should take exceeding heed lest it dig a pit for its 



BEWARE TEE ANQLO-DANE! 371 

own feet. It deals with the Anglo-Dane. No feeble 
race is this; though of that hard and sullen patience 
slow to be commoved. Revolution is the lesson of tliis 
race. It has crushed thrones beneath the heel of its 
hates; kings have not waited to look it between the 
eyes in the hour of its anger. I write as one of most 
indifference. The world is my tent, and where ink 
and paper find each other there shall I live. 

There will be those to cavil for that I print of 
Richard Croker while he lives. Of such I ask, is a man 
the better subject for being dead? Or rather, is he no 
subject until the clods have covered him? We should 
all be sextons on such terms. I write of Richard 
Croker as he was and is; his epicedium is yet to be 
chaunted. As I look backward on what I have told in 
this book, I am content. I have spoken some decent 
truths of him most lied upon of his place and day. 
And I have admitted well of the " machine " for reason 
readily declared. Were a theory of politics, to include 
the " machine," presented for my sanction, I would 
say " no " ; just as I would turn a negative on a theory 
of social existence which included the rum shop and 
the brothel. But the trail of my experience has not 
been traveled in vain; I have not now to learn that 
difference between the theoretical and the practical 
which all who live this life of ours must account for 
and accommodate. In theory I might not applaud 
the " machine." For a precise and kindred reason of 
theory I would not indorse an army. In the abstract 
I might see faults in what, by Richard Croker, is done 
and left undone. But theories and abstractions fall 
before the practical. Richard Croker deals with con- 
ditions and with men as they are. The town is not 



^>- 



372 RIOEARD CROKER. 

his handiwork; the " machine " is not his child. The 
error of all errors is the dark error of defeat. Richard 
Groker will not disavow the practical to follow a theory 
to destruction. He receives, of necessity, a situation 
of politics ready-made; and he does his best with it. 
And I say again he is a worthiest influence of his town 
and time. I have put down the truth of him. Also, 
I have had, on subjects, various and several, the unpent 
pleasure of saying what I thought and why I thought it. 



THE END. 



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